Carter Page

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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 04, 2017 9:11 pm

Carter Page fires back, says Donald Trump was behind Russia conspiracy at GOP Convention
By Bill Palmer | March 4, 2017 | 0

One day after the Donald Trump campaign tried to turn former adviser Carter Page into a fall guy over the Russia scandal, Page is now firing back and accusing Trump himself of having been behind it all. Page was one of at least three Trump advisers who met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Republican Convention, which resulted in the Republican Party platform being changed in favor of Russia.

Earlier this week, former Donald Trump campaign adviser J.D. Gordon told CNN that it was Donald Trump himself who initiated the push for the change in the Republican Party platform to favor Russia over the Ukraine, and that Trump had been pushing for it for at least four months leading up to the convention. Gordon, Carter Page, and Jeff Sessions all attended the convention meeting with the Russian Ambassador. Page has changed his story several times and can no longer be seen as particularly credible in his own right, but now he’s directly backing up the claims made by the far more credible Gordon.

Carter Page’s sudden willingness to finger Donald Trump may be a result of the Trump campaign’s actions yesterday. The campaign fully disavowed itself of Page, insisting that it had been sending him cease and desist letters for months because he had been publicly misrepresenting his role in the campaign. Then today, Harvard Law Professor and political pundit Laurence Tribe revealed the following: “Trump adviser Carter Page changes story, now says Trump, despite denial, ordered Ukraine change at RNC after Sessions met w Kislyak there!”

If Donald Trump was indeed behind the Republican National Convention conspiracy to change the Republican party platform at the behest of the Russian Ambassador, then he’s 50% of the way to being inarguably guilty. The other half would involve proving Trump having made the platform change in exchange for Russia hacking his Democratic Party opponents. But with J.D. Gordon and Carter Page now both fingering Trump for having pushed the platform change, then it appears we’re halfway there.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/car ... tion/1781/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 06, 2017 9:03 pm

Former Trump adviser says Senate Intelligence Committee asked him to preserve information about his Russia ties

Natasha Bertrand

Carter Page, then an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks at the New Economic School in Moscow in July. AP
Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump's presidential campaign, said Monday that the Senate Intelligence Committee had asked him to preserve information concerning his Russia-related activities in 2016.

In a letter obtained by Business Insider dated March 5, Page thanked Sen. Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner, a ranking member of the committee, for their "recent correspondence regarding information that you might at some point desire for ongoing investigations into the 2016 U.S. election."

As part of its investigation into whether associates of Trump had improper contact with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent letters to unspecified "organizations, agencies and officials" in late February asking them to preserve materials that might be relevant to the investigation, The Washington Post reported.

It had been unclear whether the letters were sent specifically to people affiliated with Trump.

"I am writing to let you know that I have received your letter and will be more than happy to provide any information which may be of assistance to the committee," Page wrote. "In the meantime, I will do everything in my power to reasonably ensure that all information concerning my activities related to Russia last year is preserved."

Warner's office declined to comment. Burr's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Page found himself at the center of a Russia-related firestorm last week after USA Today reported that he met Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, during an event at the Republican National Convention. At least two other Trump associates, former adviser J.D. Gordon and then Sen. Jeff Sessions, now the US attorney general, also spoke with Kislyak at the convention.

The FBI is reportedly investigating contacts that Page and several other current and former Trump associates had with Russian officials during the election. An unverified dossier about Trump's ties to Russia, compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele at the request of anti-Trump Republicans, named Page as a liaison between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

Page, who has worked at Merrill Lynch in Moscow and says he has advised Russia's oil and gas giant Gazprom on "key transactions," has strongly denied the accusation that he served as a middleman between Trump's campaign and Russia.

In a February letter addressed to the Justice Department, he called such claims an "illegal" form of "retribution" for a speech he gave in Moscow at the New Economic School in July, in which he slammed the US for its "hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." He blamed Hillary Clinton's campaign for what he characterized as perpetuating the story and villainizing him for "vocalizing my thoughts in a free academic forum."

In his letter to Warner and Burr, Page said he was "eagerly" awaiting "your committee's call to help finally set the record straight following the false evidence, illegal activities as well as other lies distributed by Mrs. Hillary Clinton's campaign and their associates in coordination with the Obama administration, which defamed me and other supporters of the Trump campaign."
http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-p ... ign=buffer
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
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Posts: 32090
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:10 pm

‘You get the documents’ and ‘tell him to go f*ck himself’: Russian spy claims Carter Page met with him to pass intel



A Former Trump Adviser Met With A Russian Spy
Carter Page told BuzzFeed News that he had been in contact with at least one Russian spy working undercover out of Moscow’s UN office in 2013.

Posted on April 3, 2017, at 5:39 p.m.
Ali Watkins

NEW YORK — A former campaign adviser for Donald Trump met with and passed documents to a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013.

The adviser, Carter Page, met with a Russian intelligence operative named Victor Podobnyy, who was later charged by the US government alongside two others for acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government. The charges, filed in January 2015, came after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring that was seeking information on US sanctions as well as efforts to develop alternative energy. Page is an energy consultant.

A court filing by the US government contains a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Podobnyy speaks with one of the other men busted in the spy ring, Igor Sporyshev, about trying to recruit someone identified as “Male-1.” BuzzFeed News has confirmed that “Male-1” is Page.

The revelation of Page’s connection to Russian intelligence — which occurred more than three years before his association with Trump — is the most clearly documented contact to date between Russian intelligence and someone in Trump’s orbit. It comes as federal investigators probe whether Trump’s campaign-era associates — including Page — had any inappropriate contact with Russian officials or intelligence operatives during the course of the election. Page has volunteered to help Senate investigators in their inquiry.

Carter Page, then-adviser to Donald Trump's campaign, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the New Economic School in Moscow last July
Pavel Golovkin / AP
Carter Page, then-adviser to Donald Trump's campaign, speaks at the graduation ceremony for the New Economic School in Moscow last July
It remains unclear how connected Page was to the Trump campaign. He rose to prominence seemingly out of nowhere last summer, touted by then-candidate Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers. Page was quickly cut from the Trump team following reports that federal investigators were probing his ties to Russian officials. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said last month that the campaign had sent Page cease and desist letters last year, demanding he stop associating himself with it.

A US intelligence official said investigators intend to question Page eventually, but that he was not considered a high priority. “There’s so many people that are more relevant,” the official said.

The court filing includes a colorful transcript of Podobnyy speaking with Sporyshev about trying to recruit Page.

“[Male-1] wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am...He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up,” Podobnyy said. “I also promised him a lot...this is intelligence method to cheat, how else to work with foreigners? You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go fuck himself.”

Page confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Monday that he is “Male-1” in the court filing, and said he had been in contact with Podobnyy, who was working at the time at Moscow’s UN office in New York City under diplomatic cover, although he was really an SVR agent. Pressed on details of his contact with Podobnyy, Page said their interactions did not include anything sensitive.

According to the complaint, Page met Podobnyy in January 2013 at an energy conference in New York. It says that from January to June of that year, Page met with, emailed with and “provided documents to [Podobnyy] about the energy business.”

Evgeny Buryakov, left, during sentencing on espionage charges last May
Elizabeth Williams / AP
Evgeny Buryakov, left, during sentencing on espionage charges last May
After federal investigators were looking into the ring, focusing on Podobnyy, Sporyshev, as well as a third man, Evgeny Buryakov, Page was interviewed by FBI counterintelligence agent Gregory Monaghan and another unnamed FBI agent in June 2013, the filing reads.

Podobnyy and Sporyshev were charged in absentia — working under official cover positions, they were afforded diplomatic immunity and were whisked out of the country. Buryakov, who worked under unofficial cover as an employee of state-controlled Vnesheconombank in Manhattan, pled guilty to a charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was due to have been released from a federal prison in Elkton, Ohio on Saturday, and returned to Moscow.

Speaking with BuzzFeed News, Page suggested that the complaint was written so that it was obvious he was the Gazprom-connected man Podobnyy talked about recruiting.

“In this city? Give me a break,” he said. “It is so obvious.”

In a previous conversation, when asked if he had ever met with Russian intelligence operatives, Page told Buzzfeed News in a message on the Telegram messaging app: “I’M VERY CAREFUL WHEN I SAY ‘NEVER’” BUT EVEN IF I HAD INADVERTENTLY HAD “CONTACT” SUCH AS BRIEFLY SAYING HELLO TO SOMEONE WHO MIGHT FALL UNDER THAT LABEL IN PASSING NOTHING I EVER SAID TO THEM OR ANYONE ELSE WOULD’VE EVER BROKEN ANY LAW.”

A dossier compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, used to brief then-President Obama, then-President-elect Trump and Gang of Eight congressional leaders in January, cited a Kremlin official as saying that the Kremlin had sought to a relationship with certain figures in the US, including Page, and had indirectly funded some of their visits to Russia. Page denied playing a role in the Kremlin’s attempt to undermine the US election in conversations with BuzzFeed News.

“I didn’t do anything wrong…. including meeting with any of those people I’m falsely accused of in that Dodgy Dossier,” Page told BuzzFeed News in a message last month.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/a- ... .hu38Z7PxN


Russian spy brags about how he first recruited Donald Trump’s campaign adviser Carter Page
By Bill Palmer | April 3, 2017 | 0

If you’ve watched Donald Trump’s Russian-connected campaign adviser Carter Page in recent television interviews and concluded that he might be a mere patsy or stooge in the scandal, it turns out there’s a Russian spy who agrees with your assessment. In fact that spy is openly gloating about how he recruited Page and then took advantage of him, by offering him things he had no intention of ever delivering on.

The story comes from RawStory via BuzzFeed, and centers around Victor Podobnyy, a Russian man who has been charged by the Untied States government with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government (translation: a spy). Podobnyy has admitted to having recruited Carter Page all the way back in 2013, promising him a swift rise in Russian company Gazprom. That was enough to entice Page to hand over important documents. But as Podobnyy later bragged about his recruiting of Page, “You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go fuck himself.”

By that time Carter Page had already spent a few years working for Merrill Lynch in Russia, before coming back to New York City to launch his own company with the aim of collaborating with Gazprom. Page’s timeline is somewhat murky in the few years prior to the 2016 presidential election cycle. But as Palmer Report has previously reported (link), then-Senator and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions first introduced Carter Page to Donald Trump in March 2016, and at that point he became a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser.

Page traveled back to Moscow in the summer of 2016 to give a pro-Russia speech, and after his connections to Russia began generating too much controversy in the media, he parted ways with the Donald Trump campaign in late September. This latest revelation about a Russian spy having recruited Carter Page as early as 2013 (link: RawStory) lends credence to the suspicion that the Kremlin planted Page in the Trump campaign as a mole or go-between. What did Trump and Sessions know about this, and when did they know it?
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/russia ... page/2164/


remember this?


Bank that Kushner met with paid Russian intelligence agent's legal tab
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/29/politics/ ... veb-agent/



well remember this

The Spy Who Added Me on LinkedIn
Russia had operatives in New York for years, from Wall Street to the UN. Now one is headed to prison.
by Garrett M Graff
November 15, 2016, 4:00 AM CST

Evgeny Buryakov appears in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 26, 2015, after his arrest earlier in the day. Photographer: Elizabeth Williams/AP
Evgeny Buryakov woke up to a snowstorm. On the morning of Jan. 26, 2015, his modest brick home in the Bronx was getting the first inches of what would be almost a foot of powder, and Buryakov, the No. 2 executive at the New York branch of a Russian bank, decided to skip work and head around the corner to a grocery store to buy supplies for his family of four. As the 39-year-old Russian bundled into his winter gear and closed the front door of his house behind him, he didn’t realize he would never set foot in it again.

Since the Buryakovs’ arrival in New York in August 2010, they had seemed like any other immigrant family in the melting-pot Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale. Of average height and build, Evgeny’s only curious feature might have been his near-obsessive taste for McDonald’s. The kids in nice weather played in the sandbox out back, next to the clothesline where their mother, Marina, liked to hang their laundry. While Evgeny commuted to the 29th floor of a Manhattan high rise, she shuttled the children to a nearby parochial school and to afternoon activities like karate. The two nuns who lived next door watched the family parrot while the Buryakovs went on ski vacations.

But Evgeny was leading a double life. His real employer wasn’t a bank, but Russia’s SVR intelligence agency. For a decade, Buryakov had been working under “nonofficial cover”—a NOC, in spy talk—and, now on Wall Street, his task was to extract corporate and financial secrets and report them back to Moscow. His two handlers, also undercover, were attempting to recruit unwitting sources at consulting firms and other businesses into long-term relationships.

Berlin was once the espionage capital of the world—the place where East met West, and where undercover operatives from the KGB, CIA, MI6, and untold other agencies practiced spycraft in the shadow of the Berlin Wall. Since the end of the Cold War, however, New York has probably hosted more intelligence activity than any other city. The various permanent missions and visiting delegations at the United Nations, where even countries that are otherwise banned from the U.S. are allowed staff, have provided cover for dozens of agencies to operate. Wall Street has offered further pretexts for mining information, with its swirl of cocktail parties, networking events, and investor conferences.

The espionage story of the year, and perhaps one of the greatest foreign operations in decades, has undoubtedly been Russia’s successful effort to influence this fall’s presidential election through hacking—penetrating Democratic National Committee servers and the e-mail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The strategy marks an evolution for Russia, which historically has valued so-called HUMINT, or human intelligence, over SIGINT, or signals intelligence. It’s an evolution borne of some necessity, as Russia has in recent years struggled to install spies on American soil. The Buryakov affair illustrates the point. As the U.S. election was reeling this spring toward its astonishing conclusion, Russia’s Wall Street spy was being sentenced, haplessly, to prison.

“Whispered conversations always feel sexier”

Maria Ricci has spent her FBI career chasing Russian spies up and down the East Coast. After majoring in English at Columbia and working as a lawyer in private practice, she joined the bureau 15 years ago, assigned to the counterintelligence squad. Her first job was known internally as Operation Ghost Stories—Ricci and other agents worked for almost a decade to track a ring of Russian illegals hidden across the country in what became the FBI’s largest espionage case ever. Their investigation ended in 2010 with the arrest of 10 individuals working for the SVR, Moscow’s version of the CIA, including a sultry redhead named Anna Chapman, who became an instant tabloid star. The case inspired the hit FX series The Americans, which follows two Russian “sleeper” spies living deep undercover in 1980s Washington.

When foreign diplomats come to the U.S. for the first time, the FBI routinely scouts their profiles to identify potential intelligence plants. If agents spot something suspicious, they’ll concoct a plan to smoke the person out. The FBI’s alarms were tripped in November 2010 by the arrival in New York of Igor Sporyshev, supposedly a trade representative of the Russian Federation. One red flag was that his father, Mikhail, had been a KGB officer and a major general in its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB).

In 2011, Sporyshev attended a run-of-the-mill energy conference in New York—as did an FBI agent, posing as a Wall Street analyst. The Russian introduced himself, chatted amicably, exchanged business cards, and later followed up. “The Russians are incredibly good at what they do,” Ricci says. “They’re wary of all English speakers. What’s much easier, to get them to trust you, is if they approach you.”

In subsequent conversations, Sporyshev pushed the supposed analyst for information about the energy industry, such as company financial projections and strategy documents. The information wasn’t secret or even especially sensitive. It didn’t give Sporyshev an edge he could use to commit insider trading. Rather, asking for information like this reflected a Russian approach to intelligence that’s endured long after the Cold War.

Coming from a traditionally closed society where the media operates as an extension of the state, Russian agents tend to prioritize human recruitment and generally discount the huge amount of “open source” news and information that flows routinely out of the U.S. in government reports, independent news articles, and think tank analyses. “Whispered conversations always feel sexier,” Ricci says. And relationships that start out innocuously, with junior or midlevel workers, can be cultivated over years, until the target is senior and desensitized to sharing information with someone they think of as a longtime friend.

The FBI’s undercover agent played along with Sporyshev, handing over supposedly confidential corporate reports inside binders that had been rigged with voice-activated recording devices. From the outside, the binders appeared to be part of a numbered set. The agent told Sporyshev that the documents would be missed if they were absent too long and so they had to be returned promptly.

When the first of the binders began to flow back to the FBI, technicians downloaded the audio. “We got ‘take,’ ” they reported to Ricci, using the term for worthwhile intel. As linguists began to translate from Russian, it became clear the ruse had worked even better than the FBI had imagined. In a grave violation of security procedure, Sporyshev had carried the bugs into the secure SVR office, the rezidentura, inside Russia’s UN office on East 67th Street—its equivalent of what U.S. officials call a “SCIF,” or Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, an area that’s supposed to be free of any electronic listening devices. “Nothing given to him by someone in the United States should have ever been brought inside the SCIF,” Ricci says.

Over several months, as one binder after another circulated through Sporyshev’s hands, the FBI collected hundreds of hours of recorded conversation, much of it comically mundane. Sporyshev spent hours chatting with one colleague, Victor Podobnyy, a twentysomething who was also working under diplomatic cover as an attaché to the Russian UN mission. Both belonged to the SVR’s Directorate ER, a branch dealing with economic issues, such as trade and manufacturing. Often, they complained about the lack of drama in their lives.

“The fact that I’m sitting with a cookie right now at the … chief enemy spot—f---!” Podobnyy said in April 2013. Sure, he knew he couldn’t expect action like in the “movies about James Bond,” he said. But the job was supposed to be more invigorating than pushing paper at a desk. “Of course, I wouldn’t fly helicopters,” Podobnyy said, “but pretend to be someone else, at a minimum.”

Sporyshev was sympathetic. “I also thought that at least I would go abroad with a different passport,” he said, and then he complained about the parsimony of the agency’s expense reimbursement.

Amid the hours of bellyaching, one thing stood out: an oblique reference to a NOC hidden inside Wall Street. FBI agents pieced together that Sporyshev and Podobnyy had been discussing Buryakov. The putative banking analyst had previously appeared on the FBI’s radar, but the agency hadn’t yet pinned him as a spy.

Buryakov in court.
Buryakov in court.Photographer: Elizabeth Williams/AP Photo

The son of a government construction engineer, Buryakov grew up in the remote southern Russian village of Kushchyovskaya, where he met Marina in 1994, when she was still in high school; they married in 1999. Smart and inquisitive, Buryakov was gifted at learning foreign languages. He worked in Moscow first as a tax inspector, then joined the Vnesheconombank, or VEB—the Russian government’s development bank, which backed economic projects that would boost growth and employment.

At some point, Buryakov signed on with the SVR intelligence agency. Following a five-year stint with VEB in South Africa, he arrived in the U.S. just weeks after the FBI had rolled up Operation Ghost Stories. He was the first of the next wave of Russian intelligence officers.

Buryakov, his wife, and their two children, Pavel and Polina, rented a $3,000-a-month, two-story house on Leibig Avenue in Riverdale. The Bronx neighborhood was well-known to U.S. counterintelligence. A few blocks away, clearly visible from the Buryakovs’ driveway, looms a 20-story, cream-colored high-rise built for Russia’s UN staff. The six-acre compound, known as the White House, had long made the area a favorite for other Eastern European diplomats and immigrants. Sporyshev lived right around the corner. The Buryakovs mostly kept to themselves, but the nuns next door often saw Evgeny smoking cigarettes at the end of his driveway late at night, and Marina would host other mothers from school.

By day, Buryakov lived the ordinary life of a Wall Street analyst: reading and writing reports; attending meetings, conferences, and parties; building connections on LinkedIn. His employer, VEB, occupied a useful niche in the global banking network. The public-private nature of the bank allowed Buryakov to move freely in government, corporate, and nongovernmental organization circles, without anyone suspecting they were talking to an intelligence officer. (Alexander Slepnev, the head of VEB’s New York office, didn’t respond to requests for comment.)

As one of Buryakov’s handlers, Sporyshev gave him a series of often menial side projects. In May 2013, Sporyshev asked him to outline some questions that the Russian news outlet ITAR-TASS could use when interviewing an official from the New York Stock Exchange. Buryakov did about 20 minutes of research, then recommended asking about exchange-traded funds.

Buryakov also became involved in a multibillion-dollar aerospace deal when Canada’s Bombardier attempted to team up with Rostek, Russia’s state-owned defense manufacturer. Using his bank job as cover, Buryakov traveled to Canada twice, in 2012 and 2013, to participate in meetings and conferences about the proposed agreement. Then, after researching the Canadian labor unions’ resistance to overseas production, he wrote a proposal for the SVR’s “active measures directorate” that Sporyshev described as “geared towards pressuring the unions and securing from the company a solution that is beneficial to us.” It wasn’t 007-worthy. But it helped Russian industry pursue a lucrative contract. (The arrangement was paused after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, alarming Western governments.)

As Buryakov performed more such tasks, the FBI built a surveillance dragnet around him. Agents conducted multiple covert searches of his office at VEB. In December 2013, Gregory Monaghan—the lead agent on the case—showed up at Buryakov’s landlord’s office to ask about gaining entrance to the house. The landlord consented, and while the Buryakovs were away on a ski trip that winter, the FBI sneaked in and wired the house for audio and video. Over the next several months, the bureau surveilled more than four dozen meetings between Buryakov and his handlers.


Inside Russia’s UN mission, in New York’s Lenox Hill neighborhood, Sporyshev and Podobnyy were also recorded trying to recruit sources across Wall Street: consultants, analysts, and other financial professionals who had access to proprietary data or documents—or might win access later in their careers. Russian intelligence agencies have demonstrated extreme patience for schemes that play out over many years—time horizons far beyond those that will hold the interest of U.S. agencies, presidential administrations, and congressional leaders. The agents of Directorate ER sought to build relationships by asking for innocuous information that nobody would suspect might one day lead to the sharing of more valuable intelligence.

As the FBI’s bugs listened, Podobnyy informed Sporyshev that he’d told one woman, a recent college graduate, that he “needed answers to some questions, answers to which I could not find in open sources. Due to that, I am interested to find information from paid publications and opinions of independent people who discuss these topics amongst themselves behind closed doors.” The woman, Podobnyy said, responded favorably.

Podobnyy also approached a male financial consultant he’d met at an energy symposium. The consultant often traveled to Moscow and was keenly interested in Gazprom, Russia’s massive energy conglomerate. “It’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money,” Podobnyy told Sporyshev. “For now, his enthusiasm works for me. I also promised him a lot: that I have connections in the trade representation, meaning that you can push contracts.” He laughed. “I will feed him empty promises.”

The FBI’s Ricci says such attempts at cultivating connected New Yorkers are far more common, and successful, than many people in the financial world think. Americans regularly become unwitting agents, passing along useful tips to Russian officers without realizing who they’re dealing with. “When the Russians come to you, they don’t say, ‘Hey, I’m an intelligence officer,’ ” Ricci says. “They say, ‘Hey, friend, it’d be useful to have this information.’ ”

Buryakov devoted his time to finding and making contacts across New York—referring potential sources and future contacts for his handlers and other intelligence officers to pursue. “This isn’t about just stealing classified information. This is about stealing you,” Ricci says. “It’s about having you in a Rolodex down the road when they need it.”

Or, as Sporyshev put it in a recorded conversation: “This is intelligence method to cheat. How else to work with foreigners? You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f--- himself. ‘But not to upset you, I will take you to a restaurant and give you an expensive gift. You just need to sign for it.’ This is ideal working method.”

“The original goal for a counterintelligence case isn’t an arrest—it’s to recruit or deflect them”

By the middle of 2014, FBI agents thought they had enough evidence to arrest Buryakov but decided to go for more—preparing a final dramatic episode that would document the full cycle of a foreign spy recruiting a Wall Street source, from first contact to document handoff. The bureau asked an Atlantic City businessman (his name hasn’t been disclosed) to approach Buryakov, pretending to represent a wealthy investor who wanted to open casinos in Russia. In a bugged call with Buryakov, Sporyshev was dubious, saying the encounter seemed like “some sort of setup. Some sort of trap.”

Buryakov proceeded anyway. On Aug. 8, 2014, he spent seven hours touring Atlantic City with the FBI source, visiting casinos and looking over a PowerPoint presentation about the project. The FBI source provided Buryakov with government documents, marked “Internal Treasury Use Only,” about individuals who had been sanctioned by the U.S. over the Crimean invasion. Buryakov said he’d like more documents like that, and later in the month, the source handed over another report, this one on the Russian banking sector, labeled “Unclassified/FOUO, or “For Official Use Only.” That same day, Buryakov called Sporyshev to discuss “the schoolbooks,” and that night, briefcase in hand, he went directly from his VEB office to Sporyshev’s home in the Bronx. An FBI surveillance team monitored from outside.

SVR agents work on five-year contracts, and toward the end of 2014, Sporyshev and Podobnyy returned to Russia, their tours over. Now that Buryakov’s handlers were gone, the FBI grew concerned about identifying their replacements. “They could’ve completely changed the meetups and contact procedures, so we didn’t think it was worth letting [Buryakov] continue to operate,” Ricci says. One of the oddities of counterintelligence is that countries regularly tolerate both known and suspected spies, allowing them to operate under what they hope is a watchful eye. “The original goal for a counterintelligence case isn’t an arrest—it’s to recruit or deflect them,” Ricci says. “My No. 1 priority is to make sure no one steals our secrets.” That mission appears to have succeeded. Aside from documents the FBI allowed him to see, Buryakov rarely seemed to get his hands on material more valuable than what any average Wall Streeter might possess.

The FBI scheduled his arrest for Jan. 26, 2015. As the snow fell on VEB’s headquarters and Buryakov’s Riverdale home, search teams and dozens of agents waited anxiously outside both locations. Buryakov headed out to get groceries. After he paid, he found Ricci’s agents, clad in blue FBI windbreakers, waiting in the parking lot. “Sir, you have to come with us,” they said, then hurried him into an SUV. Buryakov, the agents later reported, was calm and hardly seemed surprised. Other agents then took his purchases the two blocks back along Leibig Avenue, where they knocked on his door, delivered the groceries, and told Marina that they had a warrant to enter. As they searched the house, technicians covertly removed the FBI’s audio and video surveillance tools.

By day’s end, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest and unsealed the criminal complaint against Buryakov, as well as naming Sporyshev and Podobnyy, who were both protected by diplomatic immunity. The arrest and announcement touched off a flurry of international activity. In Moscow, the Russian government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest. In New York, Marina and the children fled into the nearby Russian mission residence, their family car abandoned on Mosholu Street outside, until they were able to leave the country. Russian colleagues hurriedly moved the family’s belongings out of the Riverdale home, tearing the house apart in the vain hope of uncovering the FBI’s recording devices.

VEB paid $45,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Buryakov’s landlord and also paid for his legal counsel. Initially, Buryakov’s defense was that he’d done nothing more than many professionally ambitious expatriates in New York do: He’d simply agreed to help his countrymen, Sporyshev and Podobnyy, with their work and lives in America. But eventually he pleaded guilty to being an unregistered foreign agent—the technical federal charge for espionage.

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Buryakov’s arrest did little to slow the flow of intelligence operatives into America. Even as his case played out in the New York courts in the summer of 2015, Border Patrol agents apprehended a man from Ukraine crossing the Texas border, according to previously unreported internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection documents. “It is my opinion that this subject is a Russian asset and was sent by the Russians to infiltrate the U.S.,” the agent wrote. “[The individual] is a perfect asset since he already knows some English, is militarily trained, and is fluent in Russian and his native tongue of Arabic.” Following standard procedure, though, the man was released into the U.S. with a notice to appear at a deportation hearing. The FBI refuses to confirm if it’s aware of the incident or if it’s monitoring the man.

On May 24, 2016, Buryakov was sentenced to 30 months in prison, and he now resides in the federal low-security prison in rural Lisbon, Ohio. He’s still listed on VEB’s website as its deputy representative in New York.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... n-linkedin


well read this

New York banker who admitted to being a Russian spy will be released early from federal prison and deported to Moscow
Evgeny Buryakov pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the U.S. government
In May 2016, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was fined $10,000
Buryakov was initially supposed to be released on July 27 from the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton, Ohio
ICE spokesman has said that Buryakov would be released early on Saturday before being deported
By Agencies and Dailymail.com Reporter
PUBLISHED: 00:16 EDT, 3 April 2017 | UPDATED: 05:55 EDT, 3 April 2017

A Russian banker accused of participating in a Cold War-style spy ring was to be released early from federal prison this weekend, it was reported.

Evgeny Buryakov pleaded guilty in March 2016 to conspiring with others to act as an agent of a foreign government without registering with the U.S. government.

In May 2016, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was fined $10,000.

Buryakov was initially supposed to be released on July 27 from the Federal Correctional Institution in Elkton, Ohio, CBS News reported Friday.

Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian banker accused of participating in a Cold War-style spy ring was to be released early from federal prison this weekend, it was reported
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Evgeny Buryakov, a Russian banker accused of participating in a Cold War-style spy ring was to be released early from federal prison this weekend, it was reported

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesman told CBS that Buryakov would be released early on Saturday before being deported.

ICE spokesman Khaalid Walls told the outlet: 'He will be transferred to ICE custody upon release from Elkton.

'Travel arrangements will be finalized in the very near term... but for operational security reasons, we do not confirm removal dates prior to a person's departure.'

Walls did not immediately return a late Sunday evening email message from DailyMail.com seeking comment.

Federal Bureau of Prisons documents cite good behavior in the early release decision, according to the CBS report.

Buryakov has been behind bars for 26 months - and that amount includes time served prior to his sentencing, the report also said.

Buryakov had agreed to be deported when he completed his sentence.

Russian outpost: Buryakov, a married father-of-two, worked at Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank in Manhattan
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Russian outpost: Buryakov, a married father-of-two, worked at Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank in Manhattan

The twists in the Buryakov case are reminiscent of plotlines from the popular FX show The Americans about a married couple who are Soviet spies operating in the US in the 1980s
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The twists in the Buryakov case are reminiscent of plotlines from the popular FX show The Americans about a married couple who are Soviet spies operating in the US in the 1980s

When Buryakov was arrested in 2015, prosecutors said he had teamed up with diplomats from 2012 through January 2015 to gather sensitive economic intelligence on potential U.S. sanctions against Russian banks and on U.S. efforts to develop alternative energy resources.

They also said he purposely failed to register as a foreign agent to conceal his true role as a covert operative embedded at a Manhattan branch of Vnesheconombank, or VEB.

In papers filed in Manhattan federal court in March 2016, it emerged that the FBI eavesdropped on meetings between Buryakov and his alleged co-conspirators, Igor Sporyshev and Victor Podobnyy.

The FBI's snooping enabled the agency to penetrate the workplaces of the SVR and hear about Buryakov's work for it, prosecutors said.

Buryakov told a judge in March 2016 that he had agreed to let an official with Russia's Trade Mission in New York to direct him to take certain actions without having registered with the US attorney general's office as a Russian agent.

He said he spoke on the telephone in May 2013 with the official about information the official had requested.

The defense had argued that laws exempted Buryakov from registering because he already was a visa-carrying official with a financial institution that is an arm of the Russian government.

The government said Buryakov had obtained a work visa by lying on paperwork and saying he wouldn't commit espionage.

Eavesdropping: An FBI agent posing as an analyst at an energy firm would slip rigged binders containing purported industry analysis he wrote to a suspect Russian agent, who was required to return the binders so as not to get his source in trouble with his employer
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Eavesdropping: An FBI agent posing as an analyst at an energy firm would slip rigged binders containing purported industry analysis he wrote to a suspect Russian agent, who was required to return the binders so as not to get his source in trouble with his employer

The FBI began investigating Buryakov, Sporyshev and Podobnyy in 2010 after ten Russian spies living in the US, all members of a sleeper cell referred to as 'The Illegals' by the SVR, were arrested, including red-haired femme fatale Anna Chapman.

Neither Sporyshev and Podobnyy were not arrested, as they enjoyed diplomatic immunity in their respective roles as a Russian trade representative and an attache to the country's mission to the United Nations.

According to prosecutors, in April 2012, Sporyshev met an undercover FBI employee posing as an analyst at a New York energy firm at an oil and gas industry conference.

Over the next two years, they met to discuss the industry and other economic and political issues, prosecutors said, with Sporyshev providing gifts and cash for information.

In 2013, the FBI employee began providing Sporyshev with the binders containing purported industry analysis he wrote, supporting documents, and 'covertly placed recording devices,' prosecutors wrote.

In 2010, the feds arrested ten Russian spies living in the US, including red-haired femme fatale Anna Chapman (pictured at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013)
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In 2010, the feds arrested ten Russian spies living in the US, including red-haired femme fatale Anna Chapman (pictured at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013)

As the undercover employee said his company would fire him if it learned he disclosed confidential information, Sporyshev would promptly return the binders after reviewing them, prosecutors said.

The recordings that resulted captured statements of Sporyshev, Podobnyy, and other Russian intelligence personnel from January to May 2013, prosecutors said.

In one secretly recorded conversation, Podobnyy complained to Sporyshev that their work was nothing like 'movies about James Bond,' according to the papers.

'Of course, I wouldn't fly helicopters, but pretend to be someone else at a minimum,' he said.

Sporyshev griped that he too thought he 'at least would go abroad with a different passport'.

According to a criminal complaint, the three accused spies spoke to each other in code over the phone to set up their meetings and claimed they had an umbrella or a ticket for the others.

In person Buryakov would pass Sporyshev a bag, a magazine or a piece of paper with information hidden inside it.

Before his arrest, Buryakov lived in the Bronx with his Russian wife and two children.

VEB was in the news last week when it said on March 27 that executives held talks with Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, during a bank roadshow in 2016 when it was preparing a new strategy.

The news came as the White House announced that Kushner, a top adviser in the Trump administration, had volunteered to testify to a Senate committee probing whether Russia tried to interfere in last year's presidential election.

Russian Spy Anna Chapman walks out of Today Show interview

'As part of the preparation of the new strategy, executives of Vnesheconombank met with representatives of leading financial institutes in Europe, Asia and America multiple times during 2016,' VEB said in an emailed statement.

'During the talks, the existing practices of foreign development banks and promising trends were discussed,' the bank said.

It said roadshow meetings took place 'with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z4dEslA8dl
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:11 pm

3-man Russian spy ring operated in New York for years, prosecutors say
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow ... story.html


Preet Bharara was prosecuting Carter Page’s Russian spy handler when Donald Trump fired him
By Bill Palmer | April 3, 2017 | 0

Three different ongoing storylines centering around Donald Trump and Russia have all converged into the same story today, thanks to the arrival of a piece of information which connects the dots between all three. The short of it: we know now that Donald Trump fired U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara while he was prosecuting the Russian spy who had first recruited Trump’s campaign adviser Carter Page into the Kremlin fold.

Here’s the storyline as it now fits together. According to new reporting today from BuzzFeed, Russian spy Victor Podobnyy has been caught bragging that back in 2013 he first recruited Carter Page and convinced him to begin handing over important documents, in exchange for the empty promise of making Page rich. Then in January of 2015, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara went on to bust Victor Podobnyy’s Russian spy ring in New York (source: Los Angeles Times). Bharara had been continuing to pursue the prosecution of Podobnyy, until Donald Trump suddenly and unexpectedly fired him last month. Now today, evidence has leaked out revealing that Podobnyy first recruited Page.

In other words, Trump fired Bharara in a last ditch effort to derail the prosecution of Podobnyy, before it could reach the stage where the public would have learned that Podobnyy was Carter Page’s Russian handler. But that information has now leaked today anyway (link), and it all but confirms that Page was acting as a Kremlin mole or asset the entire time he was working for the Trump campaign. Trump had informed Bharara back in November of 2016 that he could keep his job in the new administration, making it suspicious that Trump then turned around and suddenly fired him three weeks ago. And now we almost certainly know why he did it. Yet the information Trump was trying to quash has now become public anyway.
http://www.palmerreport.com/news/preet- ... -him/2165/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:09 pm

How Did Page Get Picked?

Grigoriy Sisoev
ByJOSH MARSHALL
Published
APRIL 4, 2017, 11:51 AM EDT
One of the abiding mysteries of the Trump saga is just who those five initial foreign policy advisers were, the ones he announced at an editorial meeting with The Washington Post on March 21st, 2016. It was an odd group: five guys, half with sordid pasts and others no one had ever heard of. One of them actually had Model UN work listed as one of his job qualifications! They weren't sending their best!

This was at the point when Trump had no foreign policy advisers and he'd recently said he got his ideas on the topic from watching generals on the cable networks. Because of all this, it's always been plausible that the whole question of how these guys were picked is radically over-determined: maybe the list was just five guys someone grabbed off their rolodex in a panic in time for the Post editorial board meeting. Who knows?

The one thing that makes the list of some abiding interest was that this was the first announcement of Carter Page's association with the campaign. The new story about Page and Russian spies needs a little unpacking. Page didn't pass government documents to these spies. He wasn't in government. The rest of the story appears to show that the Russians didn't think Page knew they were spies, even though they were trying to recruit him. They also thought he was a rube. But given all the rest we've learned in recent months, the fact that Russian intelligence had tried to recruit the guy who two years later became Trump's chief advisor on Russia and Europe seems like a hell of a coincidence. It also makes it worth considering again just where this list came from. My interest was also peaked by new news that former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince also looks to be in the Trumpian mix.

One of the five advisors was Joseph E. Schmitz, the son of a notorious GOP Congressman who was an anti-Semite and member of the John Birch Society. The younger Schmitz served in the Bush administration but eventually got bounced in part because of charges of anti-Semitism against him. It turns out that after Schmitz got bounced from the Pentagon, he went to work as an executive at Blackwater. In other words, he got hired by Erik Prince.

Then there's this.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Mike Flynn's lobbying for Turkey was tied to new gas fields being developed off the coast of Israel ...

Inovo hired Mr. Flynn on behalf of an Israeli company seeking to export natural gas to Turkey, the filing said, and Mr. Alptekin wanted information on the U.S.-Turkey political climate to advise the gas company about its Turkish investments.
That reminded me of this, from a write-up in the Post from last March ...
Almost all [of George Papadopoulos' ] work appears to have revolved around the role of Greece, Cyprus and an Israeli natural gas discovery in the eastern Mediterranean. Yet Jonathan Stern, director of gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, said when asked about Papadopoulos: “He does ring a very faint bell but he’s not written anything very significant on East Mediterranean natural gas and pipelines that I can remember.”
Papadopoulos had written a number of articles on the subject in the English language Israeli press, apparently of little significance to Mr. Stern. But again, he's the guy who listed Model UN on his resume. There's a major difference here: Does Israel pivot to Turkey or Greece and Cyprus and Egypt in selling its offshore natural gas? But it's still a notable connection and Turkey's relationship to Israel and Russia was changing markedly over the course of 2016.

These points of course prove nothing. They are simply suggestive connections that may help figure out just why these four men were chosen. It does make me want to know a bit more about Prince's role in the campaign early on. In any case, with the new Page information, it's about time we find out more about just who put together this list of five people. It's a very odd list. It always was. Even more so now.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/how ... get-picked


Carter Page: 'I Didn't Want To Be A Spy'

Grigoriy Sisoev
By MATT SHUHAM
PublishedAPRIL 4, 2017, 9:47 AM EDT
4969Views
A one-time foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign denied Monday afternoon that he had ever sought to become a Russian spy.

"I didn't want to be a spy," Carter Page told ABC News. "I'm not a spy."

ADVERTISING

Page, whom the Trump administration has portrayed as a minor player in the 2016 campaign, and who stepped down from his advisory job after it was revealed that the FBI was investigating his possible ties to Kremlin-aligned Russian figures during a trip to Moscow, confirmed to BuzzFeed News that he gave information to undercover Russian agents in 2013.

Two of those agents were under cover of diplomatic immunity when they were charged with conspiracy and aiding and abetting a third agent, who was not officially working in a diplomatic capacity and served time in an Ohio prison for conspiring to act as a foreign agent.

According to ABC News, FBI court filings revealed that spy recruiters were overheard telling one of the agents, Evgeny Buryakov, about “the attempted use of Male-1 as an intelligence source for Russia.” Page confirmed to Buzzfeed that he is “Male-1.”

According to the FBI's filings, ABC reported, Page and one of the agents discussed business, and Page emphasized his ties to the Russian energy giant Gazprom. The agents were later heard laughing, according to the filings, and saying that Page didn’t know they were government agents.

“I shared basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents with Podobny who then served as a junior attaché at the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the United Nations,” Page said in a statement to ABC, before explaining that the information was culled from lectures he was giving at the time at New York University.

Watch clips of ABC News' interview with Page below:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/c ... ussian-spy
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 11, 2017 7:42 pm

The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

FBI obtained FISA warrant to monitor former Trump adviser Carter Page
What you need to know about former Trump adviser Carter Page Embed Share Play Video2:20
The FBI obtained a secret court order to monitor communications from former Trump adviser Carter Page in summer 2016, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
By Ellen Nakashima, Devlin Barrett and Adam Entous April 11 at 7:11 PM
The FBI obtained a secret court order last summer to monitor the communications of an adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, part of an investigation into possible links between Russia and the campaign, law enforcement and other U.S. officials said.

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials.

This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump’s favor.

Page has not been accused of any crimes, and it is unclear whether the Justice Department might later seek charges against him or others in connection with Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The counterintelligence investigation into Russian efforts to influence U.S. elections began in July, officials have said. Most such investigations don’t result in criminal charges.

The officials spoke about the court order on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of a counterintelligence probe.

Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests VIEW GRAPHIC
During an interview with the Washington Post editorial page staff in March 2016, Trump identified Page, who had previously been an investment banker in Moscow, as a foreign policy adviser to his campaign. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks later described Page’s role as “informal.”

Page has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with the Trump campaign or Russia.

“This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance,” Page said in an interview Tuesday. “I have nothing to hide.” He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

[Despite early denials, growing list of Trump camp contacts with Russians haunts White House]

The White House, FBI and Justice Department declined to comment.

FBI Director James B. Comey disclosed in public testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last month that the bureau is investigating efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Comey said this includes investigating the “nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts.”

Comey declined to comment during the hearing about any individuals, including Page, who worked in Moscow for Merrill Lynch a decade ago and who has said he invested in Russian energy giant Gazprom. In a letter to Comey in September, Page had said he had sold his Gazprom investment.

During the hearing last month, Democratic lawmakers repeatedly singled out Page’s contacts in Russia as a cause for concern.

The judges who rule on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests oversee the nation’s most sensitive national security cases, and their warrants are some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world of U.S. law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Any FISA application has to be approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the FBI.

Applications for FISA warrants, Comey said, are often thicker than his wrists, and that thickness represents all the work Justice Department attorneys and FBI agents have to do to convince a judge that such surveillance is appropriate in an investigation.

The government’s application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators’ basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said.

Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against another Russian agent. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.


[Former Trump adviser admits to 2013 communication with Russian spy]

An application for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act need not show evidence of a crime. But the information obtained through the intercepts can be used to open a criminal investigation and may be used in a prosecution.

The application also showed that the FBI and the Justice Department’s national security division have been seeking since July to determine how broad a network of accomplices Russia enlisted in attempting to influence the 2016 presidential election, the officials said.

Since the 90-day warrant was first issued, it has been renewed more than once by the FISA court, the officials said.

In February, Page told “PBS NewsHour” that he was a “junior member of the [Trump] campaign’s foreign policy advisory group.”

A former Trump campaign adviser said Page submitted policy memos to the campaign and several times asked to be given a meeting with Trump, though his request was never granted. “He was one of the more active ones, in terms of being in touch,” the adviser said.

The campaign adviser said Page participated in three dinners held for the campaign’s volunteer foreign policy advisers in the spring and summer of 2016, coming from New York to Washington to meet with the group. Although Trump did not attend, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a top Trump confidant who became his attorney general, attended one meeting of the group with Page in late summer, the campaign adviser said.

Page’s role as an adviser to the Trump campaign drew alarm last year from more-established foreign policy experts in part because of Page’s effusive praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his criticism of U.S. sanctions over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine.

In July, Page traveled to Moscow, where he delivered a speech harshly critical of the United States’ policy toward Russia.

While there, Page allegedly met with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant and chief executive of the energy company Rosneft, according to a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence officer and cited at a congressional hearing by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Officials said some of the information in the dossier has been verified by U.S. intelligence agencies, and some of it hasn’t, while other parts are unlikely to ever be proved or disproved.


On Tuesday, Page dismissed what he called “the dodgy dossier” of false allegations.

Page has denied such a meeting occurred, saying he has never met Sechin in his life and that he wants to testify before Congress to clear his name. A spokesman for Rosneft told Politico in September that the notion that Page met with Sechin was “absurd.” Page said in September that he briefly met Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich during that trip.

Comey has declined to discuss the details of the Russia probe, but in an appearance last month, he cited the process for getting FISA warrants as proof that the government’s surveillance powers are very carefully used, with significant oversight.

“It is a pain in the neck to get permission to conduct electronic surveillance in the United States. And that’s good,’’ he told an audience at the University of Texas in Austin.

Officials have said the FBI and the Justice Department were particularly reluctant to seek FISA warrants of campaign figures during the 2016 presidential race because of concerns that agents would inadvertently eavesdrop on political talk. To obtain a FISA warrant, prosecutors must show that a significant purpose of the warrant is to obtain foreign intelligence information.

[How hard is it to get an intelligence wiretap? Pretty hard.]

Page is the only American to have had his communications directly targeted with a FISA warrant in 2016 as part of the Russia probe, officials said.

The FBI routinely obtains FISA warrants to monitor the communications of foreign diplomats in the United States, including the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. The conversations between Kislyak and Michael Flynn, who became Trump’s first national security adviser, were recorded in December. In February, The Washington Post reported that Flynn misled Vice President-elect Mike Pence and others about his discussions with Kislyak, prompting Trump’s decision to fire him.

In March, Trump made unsubstantiated claims about U.S. surveillance of Trump Tower in New York. Later that month, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a Trump transition official, charged that details about people “associated with the incoming administration, details with little apparent foreign intelligence value” were “widely disseminated” in intelligence community reporting. He said none of the surveillance was related to Russia. The FISA order on Page is unrelated to either charge.


Last month, the former director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that U.S. law enforcement agencies did not have any FISA orders to monitor the communications of Trump, either as a candidate or as a president-elect, or his campaign. But Clapper did not address whether there were any FISA warrants targeting Trump associates.

Three years before Page became an adviser to the Trump campaign, he came to the attention of FBI counterintelligence agents, who learned that Russian spy suspects had sought to use Page as a source for information.

In that case, one of the Russian suspects, Victor Pobodnyy — who was posing as a diplomat and was later charged by federal prosecutors with acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government — was captured on tape in 2013 discussing an effort to get information and documents from Page. That discussion was detailed in a federal complaint filed against another Kremlin agent. The court documents in that spy case only identify Page as “Male 1.’’ Officials familiar with the case said that “Male 1’’ is Page.

In one secretly recorded conversation, detailed in the complaint, Pobodnyy said Page “wrote that he is sorry, he went to Moscow and forgot to check his inbox, but he wants to meet when he gets back. I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language. He flies to Moscow more often than I do. He got hooked on Gazprom thinking that if they have a project, he could rise up. Maybe he can. I don’t know, but it’s obvious that he wants to earn lots of money.’’

The same court document says that in June 2013, Page told FBI agents that he met Pobodnyy at an energy symposium in New York, where they exchanged contact information. In subsequent meetings, Page shared with the Russian his outlook on the state of the energy industry, as well as documents about the energy business, according to the court papers.

In the secret tape, Pobodnyy said he liked the man’s “enthusiasm” but planned to use him to get information and give him little in return. “You promise a favor for a favor. You get the documents from him and tell him to go f--- himself,’’ Pobodnyy said on the tape, according to court papers.

Page has said the information he provided to the Russians in 2013 was innocuous, describing it as “basic immaterial information and publicly available research documents.” He said he had assisted the prosecutors in their case against Evgeny Buryakov, who was convicted of espionage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/na ... e5c95c831a
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 12, 2017 12:58 pm

Nice Try on Carter Page, Guys

Grigoriy Sisoev
ByJOSH MARSHALL
PublishedAPRIL 12, 2017, 12:30 PM EDT

There's something a bit funny going on today. The White House is simultaneously claiming that news of the Carter Page FISA warrant vindicates their claims about Obama administration surveillance while also insisting Page had virtually nothing to do with the campaign. This is a complicated story because the Trump campaign - especially at that stage - was so chaotic and disorganized that the line between central and peripheral could be hard to detect and change from one day to the next. But the White House can't get away with saying that Page was an "informal" advisor one with "no official title."

He was as official as it got.



This is another moment when it is important to recur to the timeline. Well into 2016, Trump had no official or unofficial foreign policy advisors. Indeed, he got in trouble for saying that he got his foreign policy knowledge from watching generals talk on cable. When he had to come up with a group of official, named advisors, he did so in concert with now Attorney General Jeff Sessions and he came up with a list of five people. He announced the five at an on the record and high profile meeting with The Washington Post editorial board. There were five of them: Walid Phares, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Joe Schmitz, and ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg.

Page's official stated advisory purview? Europe and Russia.

It was quite formal and quite official. Now, the White House's current line is basically: Come on, the whole campaign was a mess. We barely even knew who he was. In part, this is true. It was a motley bunch, as I've discussed here. Some of these guys went on to big things with Trump. Walid Phares has continued to be a close administration advisor on trashing Muslims and Gen Kellogg was Trump's interim National Security Advisor. He's still at the NSC. Page was official as it got. The fact the campaign was so chaotic and the now-administration either won't say or doesn't remember how certain people got on the list is another issue entirely.

In the Spring of 2016 there were numerous write-ups of Carter Page and his roll in the Trump campaign, which the campaign either didn't object to or cooperated with. Here's one great nugget from a March 30th profile of Page from Bloomberg News ...
When Donald Trump named him last week as one of his foreign-policy advisers, Page says his e-mail inbox filled up with positive notes from Russian contacts. “So many people who I know and have worked with have been so adversely affected by the sanctions policy,” Page said in a two-hour interview last week. “There's a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation.”
It is quite true that Page never seems to have been a Trump insider. They claim at least that he never met with Trump - a claim I have little problem believing. Indeed, Page's best defense against being a spy is his own enduring and profound gooberishness. Even the Russian spies the FBI recorded discussing efforts to recruit him in 2013 thought he was a doofus. But again, he was named not on some random secondary advisory panel. He was one of five named Trump foreign policy advisors and remained with that status for months. Our headline the day he was announced: "Donald Trump Finally Releases Partial List Of His Foreign Policy Advisers."



Having followed this evolving story for a year, I do not think for a moment that Page was running the show, directing Trump's actions or even speaking to him regularly or maybe at all. I think there are much bigger fish who are getting much less attention. Why Page was apparently the only one monitored with a FISA warrant is a good question. It's possible he was the only one clumsy and sloppy enough to get the FBI's early attention or provide enough material to get a warrant. It may also tell us how sluggish the FBI's investigation was or that the penetration of the campaign didn't run that deep. Regardless, Page was a high profile, named, titled advisor for the campaign. For months.

Reporters should get snowed into forgetting that.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/nic ... -page-guys
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:36 pm

Why Surveillance of Carter Page Is Such a Bombshell
You don’t get slapped with a FISA warrant unless the court thinks you could be the agent of a foreign power.

Carter Page, a former foreign-policy adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, reportedly was targeted for surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an extraordinary revelation that — if true — suggests Page may have been working as an agent on behalf of a foreign power.

The report late Tuesday in the Washington Post provided the first concrete evidence linking Page to Russian intelligence at the time when he was working on the Trump campaign. Page, a former investment banker who lived and worked in Moscow from 2004 to 2007, was a target of a Russian intelligence recruitment operation in New York in 2013, court documents show — before the Trump presidential campaign was operational.

“He flies to Moscow more often than I do,” one alleged Russian spy said then of Page, according to court documents. Page reportedly traveled to Moscow in July last year, where he was rumored to have met with senior Kremlin officials, including Igor Sechin, a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin and head of oil giant Rosneft.

The FBI and two congressional intelligence committees are currently carrying out wide-ranging investigations into the Russian campaign to meddle in the U.S. election and boost Trump’s electoral chances last year, though those investigations have been overshadowed in the past week by the Trump administration’s abrupt policy changes on Syria and suddenly chilled relations with Russia.

If the Post report is correct, U.S. officials convinced a FISA court judge during the presidential campaign that there is probable cause that Page was “knowingly” working as an agent of a foreign government while advising Trump.

Page has denounced any surveillance directed against him as politically motivated, even while Washington has in recent months been thick with rumors about who among Trump’s inner circle may have been targeted for surveillance under FISA. Thinly sourced reports have claimed that the government sought and received FISA orders targeting Russian banks who may have been laundering money — which could have ensnared U.S. citizens.

The Post article said that Page is the only American whose communications were directly targeted under FISA in 2016 in connection with the Russian investigation. But other Americans could have had their communications intercepted if they were in contact with foreign officials already under surveillance, as happened to former national security adviser Mike Flynn, whose phone calls to the Russian ambassador were intercepted.

In order to target Page directly under FISA, lawyers working on behalf of the Justice Department’s national security division had to prove probable cause that he was an agent of a foreign power. But what, precisely, does that mean?

FISA sets out a series of criteria that government lawyers must meet. Principally, an agent of a foreign power is someone who “knowingly engages in clandestine intelligence gathering activities for or on behalf of a foreign power.” Such activity can be carried out at the “direction of an intelligence service or network of a foreign power,” but doesn’t have to be.

U.S. persons can also be targeted for entering the United States under a fraudulent identity on behalf of a foreign power or by aiding or abetting the activities of an agent of a foreign power.

Government lawyers must meet a standard of probable cause to secure a FISA order, which refers to marshalling enough evidence to convince a judge that a crime may have been committed. FBI Director James Comey has described the onerous process the Justice Dept. must go through to assemble evidence against a possible target.

For many civil libertarians, the FISA court has been vilified as a rubber stamp for the U.S. government’s surveillance activity. In 2015, for example, the court approved every one of the 1,456 applications that it considered. In previous years, the approval rate has hovered above 99 percent.

But former government national-security lawyers, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe classified legal proceedings, say those statistics don’t reflect the real difficulties of convincing a judge to authorize surveillance on a U.S. citizen.

Government lawyers will frequently brief judges orally on their applications, or submit a “read”-copy of their briefs. Judges will then provide feedback and the government will resubmit their case. This back and forth between the government can include discussions of the evidence backing up the claim that a person is the agent of a foreign power, as well as so-called “minimization procedures,” which refer to the guidelines in place for handling the communications of Americans caught up in a surveillance operation.

The process means that the Justice Dept. only formally seeks authorization for a FISA warrant when it has all but ensured that a warrant will be granted; bids for a warrant that look like they’ll be unsuccessful, lawyers say, are quietly withdrawn rather than formally submitted.

Government lawyers argue that this process results in heavy scrutiny of applications.

The identities of targets of FISA orders — both before and after their approval — are closely guarded. National security officials consider the targets of surveillance under FISA to be among the government’s most sensitive secrets; targets are more valuable if they remain unaware of surveillance.

Additionally, former government lawyers also argue that the intense secrecy surrounding FISA orders is necessary because of the tarnish of being investigated under it. In the context of FISA, to be an “agent of a foreign power” is to be suspected of knowingly working against the interests of the United States.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/12/why ... bombshell/


Carter Page Feels Like a Warning Shot
Someone leaked this news with a very specific aim.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 12, 2017

This is the kind of thing that doesn't leak, even in Washington. Except this one did, and that makes all the difference. From The Washington Post:

The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page's communications after convincing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power, in this case Russia, according to the officials. This is the clearest evidence so far that the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents. Such contacts are now at the center of an investigation into whether the campaign coordinated with the Russian government to swing the election in Trump's favor.
Let us begin by stating that the FISA Court—a rubber-stamp secret court issuing secret warrants—gives me the willies, and it has ever since it was created in the late 1970s response to the Church committee's revelations of CIA depredations. (During the late Bush administration, I got something of a kick out of liberals who were on fire because the Bush folks ignored the FISA court.) That being said, unless you're living fulltime in Alex Jonestown, the fact that the FBI got this warrant, and then got it extended, means that there was something very hinky about Page's relationship with the blinis-and-bullets crowd in Moscow.

But more significant to me, anyway, is the fact that all of this leaked—the warrant and the specific individual against whom it was filed. This just doesn't happen. This can't be anything but a warning shot from the intelligence community. We know, and you know we know, so how about you watch your step for a while? Meanwhile, Page was busy performing some improv at Bad Historical Analogy Theater.

"This confirms all of my suspicions about unjustified, politically motivated government surveillance," Page said in an interview Tuesday. "I have nothing to hide." He compared surveillance of him to the eavesdropping that the FBI and Justice Department conducted against civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Well, no, but thank you for playing.

The government's application for the surveillance order targeting Page included a lengthy declaration that laid out investigators' basis for believing that Page was an agent of the Russian government and knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, officials said. Among other things, the application cited contacts that he had with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013, officials said. Those contacts had earlier surfaced in a federal espionage case brought by the Justice Department against the intelligence operative and two other Russian agents. In addition, the application said Page had other contacts with Russian operatives that have not been publicly disclosed, officials said.
There's an insane amount of detail in the story about what perked up the interest of the FBI concerning Page's contacts with various Russian operatives. This also is not a usual thing. This is the kind of material that gets released because whomever released it has a good reason to do so. (None of this is to minimize the work it takes for the Post's reporters to cultivate sources in the toughest place in the country to do so.) I'm starting to lose track of all the low-running wars that are going on within this administration, but all the conniving and backstabbing and intrigue is one of the most Russian things about it.

Any day now, we're going to be looking to see who's golfing at Mar-a-Lago with the same interest we once had as to who was going to the opera in Moscow.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/po ... rrant-fbi/


Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson

BREAKING (h/t private source): Carter Page's NYC office has a connecting walkway to Trump Tower. Did Kislyak use it? http://www.regus.com/virtual-office/united-states/new-york/manhattan/new-york-new-york-city-590-madison-avenue …

Image
https://twitter.com/sethabramson/status/852272803189592064
(1) WP casually notes FISA warrants don't require probable cause. "An app for electronic surveillance...need not show evidence of a crime."

(2) DOJ-NatSec and the FBI began their #Russiagate investigation right after Chris Steele gave U.S. CI pages from his dossier in July 2016.

(3) The warrant's timing (07/2016) and renewals suggest the DOJ and FBI used the "Page pages" from the Dossier or Page's actions at the RNC.

(4) WP says the 90-day warrant was renewed "more than once"--which (do the math) means the DOJ/FBI investigation of Page _just concluded_.

(5) Another possibility is that the investigation was _still ongoing_—and the leak to the WP compromised the investigation by alerting Page.

(6) Based on the timing of the warrant and renewals, the DOJ and FBI can likely confirm/deny everything said on Page in the Steele Dossier.

(7) If so, the DOJ/FBI know for certain whether Trump got a percentage of the 2016 Rosneft sale in exchange for lifting sanctions on Russia.

(8) That this is just _one_ of the FISA warrants secured for the #Russiagate investigation may mean _other_ Russian agents worked for Trump.

(9) Page's 09/2016 letter to the FBI now appears false—exposing him to federal charges of Making False Statements or Obstruction of Justice.

(10) Assuming he's not a secret Putin fanatic, the chances that Page will seek immunity and roll on higher-ups (e.g. Trump) is astronomical.

(BONUS) If the DOJ/FBI unmasked names of Americans communicating with Page, they may know Trump officials lied about Page's campaign role.

(BONUS2) Page's denial he met Sechin is contradicted by an MSNBC interview in which he says he was in meetings where Sechin was in the room.

(BONUS3) Comey says FISA applications are "wrist-thick"—suggesting the FBI had much more on Page than stale 2013 data and July 2016 events.

(BONUS4) Esquire says that the NatSec community leaking to the WP may be a public warning to the Trump White House that they've been caught.

(BONUS5) The DOJ/FBI avoids seeking FISA warrants for public figures during an election. So their level of concern on Page had to be _huge_.

(BONUS6) Claims the FBI found nothing in 2016 are based on a lie about Jim Clapper: in fact, Comey never briefed DNI Clapper on #Russiagate.

(BONUS7) If Flynn became DIA head in July 2012, why _didn't_ he know Page had a dodgy past when he saw in 2016 they were both on Team Trump?

(BONUS8) Once Trump began getting classified briefings post-election, why didn't CI tell him about Page? Is it because Trump's a target too?

(BONUS9) If the FBI _did_ use the Steele Dossier to renew their Page warrant, wouldn't they also have used it to get _other_ FISA warrants?

(BONUS10) The FBI suspected Page of sending docs to the Russians in 2013. So what Trump campaign NatSec docs did he send Putin pre-election?
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Aug 03, 2017 7:22 pm

Turns out the Feds had Carter Page under FISA surveillance the entire time he worked for Donald Trump
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 5:58 pm EDT Thu Aug 3, 2017


On a day when the Trump-Russia scandal and investigation are exploding on multiple fronts, including a Special Counsel grand jury issuing subpoenas to those involved in the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russia, a largely forgotten player in the scandal is suddenly back in the news. It now turns out Carter Page, who was long suspected of being a Trump-Russia go between, was under federal surveillance the entire time he worked for Donald Trump.



It was widely reported months ago that there had been a FISA surveillance warrant on Carter Page since at least the summer of 2016, which would have been around the midpoint of his time working for the Donald Trump campaign. But a new on-air report today from CNN reveals that the surveillance on Page dates all the way back to 2014. This means that every word of Page’s remote communications with Donald Trump and the campaign have likely been recorded.



There is also the question of why this new revelation about Carter Page is suddenly leaking out on the same day in which Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel is now essentially entering the public phase of its investigation and prosecution. There have been no reports that Page was in any way involved in the meeting between Trump Jr. and Russia. But it’s worth asking if it’s a coincidence that this new information about Page is leaking on the same day subpoenas are going out to Trump campaign members.



This could be the Feds’ way of signaling to those receiving the subpoenas that there’s no point in trying to hide certain phone calls or digital communications they may have had with regard to Russia, because they were intercepted through the surveillance on Carter Page. As the grand jury story comes to the forefront, keep an eye out for any ongoing mentions of Carter Page if you want to figure out how he plays into this
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/fe ... rump/4162/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 10, 2017 7:06 pm

Page won’t testify because he would probably end up in prison if he told the truth

he had a "come to Jesus" meetin' with somebody..... he ain't laughin' like an idiot anymore.

remember when Trump denied knowing Carter Page? And then Moscow Times reported that Trump almost named him as the US Ambassador to Russia..?

This is the same Carter Page who was on TV every other night in the winter/spring........same Carter Page who said he "couldn't wait" to testify

Carter Page says he won’t testify before Senate Intelligence panel in Russia probe
By ALI WATKINS 10/10/2017 05:50 PM EDT

Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, informed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he will not be cooperating with any requests to appear before the panel for its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and would plead the Fifth, according to a source familiar with the matter.

A former naval-officer-turned-energy consultant, Page came under fire last year after reports emerged that he had met with high-level associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2016. While Page denied those meetings occurred, the Trump campaign distanced itself from the adviser not long after, with former officials saying that Page and Trump had never met.

Page also attracted attention earlier this year after it was revealed that he once came under scrutiny by the FBI for his contact with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013. Page was never charged with a crime, and the association happened years before he came into Trump’s orbit.

The Intelligence Committee has sought documents and testimony from Trump associates — including Page — as it seeks to piece together Russian efforts to manipulate and interfere with the 2016 presidential race. It has held high-profile closed-door meetings with several current White House and Trump-related officials, including Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. But the panel has also signaled an interest in interviewing former campaign associates such as Page, to determine how, if at all, the Russians sought to infiltrate Trump's circle in the throes of the presidential race.

It’s not clear if the committee has yet sent a formal request to Page asking him to testify.

Page did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The intelligence committee declined to comment.

Though Page’s resistance to testify may delay his appearance before the panel, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) have threatened to compel any official or Trump-connected figure who tries to evade the committee, including through the use of subpoenas.

Page was eager for the committee’s attention earlier this year, when he showed up of his own volition to the panel’s secure office spaces on Capitol Hill to drop off a document he created alleging that he was the target of a smear campaign by Hillary Clinton’s aides. Clinton and her associates, Page alleged in his document — which he also shopped around to news organizations — were committing a hate crime against him by planting false stories about his ties to Russia, Page said. He was being targeted, he wrote in the document, because he was a Catholic male
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/1 ... obe-243648


Donald Trump adviser Carter Page pleads the fifth as Trump-Russia scandal explodes
Bill Palmer
Updated: 6:47 pm EDT Tue Oct 10, 2017
Home » Opinion

Yet another high profile Donald Trump campaign adviser has announced that he’ll be invoking the Fifth Amendment in order to try to avoid testifying before Congress about his role in the Trump-Russia scandal. While this will deprive the viewing public of getting to watch what might have been explosive testimony, it’s a sign of just how explosive the scandal has become for Donald Trump behind the scenes.


The latest Trump campaign adviser to plead the fifth is Carter Page, in response to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request that he show up and testify (link). In return the committee can subpoena him anyway, and if a judge agrees, he can be legally compelled to come in for questioning. At that point Page would either be arrested for contempt of Congress, or he could show up and simply answer every question by saying he’s invoking the Fifth Amendment. But how the Senate side of this plays out is less important than what this means for the overall investigation – specifically the one being run by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.


In legal terms, if you invoke the Fifth Amendment, it’s not an admission or indicator of guilt. Instead you’re saying that if the government wants to build a case against you, it’ll have to do so without your help. Perhaps you consider yourself to be innocent, and you believe you’re going to be maliciously prosecuted. But in practical terms, this is likely an indicator that Carter Page believes he’s going to be prosecuted for crimes related to the Russia scandal. That’s where this becomes a big deal.

Robert Mueller is already in the process of pursuing criminal prosecution against Donald Trump campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, in order to pressure them into flipping on Trump. What we’re seeing today is an indicator that Mueller is probably pursuing (or about to pursue) something similar against Carter Page. Mueller only has to get one of these guys to flip on Trump. The more he adds to the mix, the more explosive this gets for Trump himself.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/ple ... ssia/5429/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Oct 17, 2017 4:14 pm

Senate Subpoenas Former Trump Adviser Carter Page
by MARIANNA SOTOMAYOR and KASIE HUNT

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed documents and testimony from Carter Page as part of its investigation of Russia's alleged intervention in the 2016 election, a source directly familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The committee expects Page will invoke his Fifth Amendment rights and refuse to answer questions, the source said.

It's a dramatic switch for Page, who earlier this year seemed eager to participate in the Senate probe. Page has said he was interviewed by the FBI in March about potential ties between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russians.

In an email, Page referred NBC News to comments he made to the Washington Examiner in a story published October 11. "I have offered to participate in the November first hearing," he told the paper. He did not confirm or deny that he had been served with a subpoena from the committee.

On November 1, the committee has scheduled an open hearing with social media giants including Twitter, Facebook and Google.

Page served as a foreign policy adviser to then-candidate Trump’s campaign and he has drawn scrutiny for meeting with the former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the Republican National Convention last year.

During the campaign's transition to the White House, former press secretary Sean Spicer denied that Trump knew Page personally.

Image: FILE PHOTO: One-time advisor of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump Page addresses the audience during a presentation in Moscow
One-time advisor of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump Carter Page addresses the audience during a presentation in Moscow, Russia, December 12, 2016. Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters file
The subpoena comes after months of Senate Intelligence Committee interviews with people of interest in the Russia probe. Earlier this month, Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., announced the committee has analyzed over 100,000 pages of documents in the course of the investigation.

Earlier this year, senators on the committee granted Burr and Warner blanket authority to issue subpoenas in the Russia investigation. Burr has previously told reporters that subpoenas could be issued if people of interest do not work with the committee.

"Everything has been voluntary up to this point, and we’ve interviewed a lot of people, and I want to continue to do it in a voluntary fashion," Burr said at a press conference in May. "But if in fact the production of things that we need are not provided, then we have a host of tools."

The committee has already issued three subpoenas to Trump’s former national security adviser General Michael Flynn and his companies.

Page has repeatedly denied he has inappropriate ties to Russia and claims he did nothing wrong in the course of advising the Trump campaign.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congre ... ge-n811551



Investigators are busting Carter Page like a piñata to get to Donald Trump in Russia scandal
Bill Palmer
Updated: 2:34 pm EDT Tue Oct 17, 2017
Home » Opinion

Even as Special Counsel Robert Mueller has gained the cooperation of former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, congressional investigators are taking a different tactic. They’ve zeroed in on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who has connections to Russia, and who has been uncooperative up to this point. As of today, it’s clear that they’re about to bust Page like a piñata in order to get to Trump.


Last week Carter Page announced his official refusal to voluntarily appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He stated that he planned to invoke the Fifth Amendment. Today, in a move that’s not particularly surprising, the committee has subpoenaed him to testify anyway, according to an NBC News report (link). To be clear, they can still legally do this. They can force Page to come in and sit in a public hearing on national television while they hurl questions at him. That’s where the damaging part comes in.


If Page sticks to his guns, he’ll end up answering every question by saying some variation of “I’m invoking my Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate myself.” From the committee’s standpoint, that’s the entire point. There’s no better way to convince the American public that the Trump-Russia scandal is the real deal, and that Trump clearly did something wrong, than to force one of his own campaign advisers to repeatedly plead the fifth on live national television.


Even as Robert Mueller’s investigation continues to work behind the scenes to build criminal cases against Donald Trump’s associates and thus get them to flip on Trump, these congressional committee investigations are largely about driving public opinion on the scandal. Carter Page is about to get busted like a piñata for all to see, thus demonstrating to the public that this scandal truly is Watergate on steroids. And since Page is now clearly worried about criminal prosecution, it sets the stage for Mueller to offer him a deal to flip on Trump.
http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/pin ... rump/5556/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Sat Oct 28, 2017 12:01 am

Carter Page Met Russian Politician Behind Uranium One Deal During Trump Campaign


Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page met last year with one of Russia’s Deputy Prime Ministers, who sat on Rosatom’s board of directors and was active in their acquisition of a controlling stake in Uranium One.

Carter Page is an energy consultant, Rosatom is the state-run Russian nuclear energy monopoly, and Arkady Dvorkavich served on its Board of Directors in 2010 and from at least 2009, until his departure in 2012.
The Democratic Coalition’s Scott Dworkin discovered photographic proof of the New Economic School’s graduation ceremony in Moscow earlier this year. (embedded below)

Dvorkovich accompanies Putin at a meeting. Source: ITAR-TASS News Agency, a state-run Russian outlet.
Dvorkovich is considered one of Putin’s closest aides in the Kremlin today.
Carter Page obtained Trump campaign permission to travel to Moscow during the height of the 2016 election campaign

That’s where Page met and spoke with the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.
The Washington Post reported last August:
After his speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, Page spoke briefly with another speaker, Arkady Dvorkovich, who is a graduate of the school, deputy to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and now chairman of the Russian Railways board.

In 2010, while Dvorkovich was a Rosatom Director, the Russian nuclear utility completed its purchase of a significant, non-exportable stake in the parent company of an American uranium mine in Montana, which is directly in turn owned by Uranium One, based in Toronto, Canada.

The FBI has been investigating Carter Page’s Trump campaign activities for some time now, which first drew widespread attention last year when a month later, in September 2016, Yahoo! reported that he had also met with the CEO of a sanctioned Russian state-run oil giant, Rosneft, on that same trip.

In September 2016, Carter Page confirmed his contact with Dvorkovich, telling the Washington Post:
Page said that as part of the school’s graduation program, he did briefly meet and shake hands with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who was also a speaker at the graduation event. That meeting was an exchange of pleasantries, he said.

It’s unknown what the two men really discussed.
The AP reports that Page now denies meeting the former Uranium One Director.
Last month, Page sued Yahoo! News and HuffPost for defamation over their reporting of a meeting with Rosneft last year.
As a Director, Arkady Dvorkovich’s role in the Uranium One transaction was so prominent, that he even attempted to meet former President Bill Clinton during the Rosatom acquisition of Uranium One shares in 2010.
But Dvorkovich’s request for a meeting with President Clinton was denied, because of the conflicting interests raised with his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Dvorkovich (background) attending another meeting with Putin.
Deputy Prime Minister Dvorkovich is still active in Russia’s for-export nuclear activities, and as recently as last year was in Turkey and commented upon a 2013 deal to install a Rosatom power plant.
Dvorkovich isn’t the only high ranking member of Rosatom to migrate into a high level role in the Kremlin.
Sergey Kiriyenko was the General Director of Rosatom from 2007 until his departure last year to become Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff.
In June 2017, Congress released records showing that Trump’s disgraced former National Security Advisor, General. Michael Flynn, spent 2015 working on a deal between Rosatom, America and Saudi Arabia. As I wrote in Occupy Democrats:
In October 2016 — a month after the deal was announced — Vladimir Putin surprisingly appointed Rosatom’s Sergey Kiriyenko as his First Deputy Chief of Staff, a very powerful position in the Kremlin, in charge of domestic policy.
Kiriyenko has a lot of Republican contacts as a former [Russian] Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin in 1998, namely convicted felon and GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose illegal activities led to multiple House Republicans being convicted of crimes just over a decade ago.
House Republicans launched a new investigation into Uranium One this week, which Newsweek is calling a confusing “conspiracy theory.”
Forbes reports that the Uranium One deal is a “real empty barrel” because of the minimal amounts of uranium actually produced.
However, this real evidence demonstrates real ties between the President’s least favorite campaign aide, Page, and his most favored, shortest tenured White House official, Flynn, and the Russian state-run company which bought Uranium One.
“The only explanation for this meeting is something sinister,” says the Democratic Coalition’s senior advisor Dworkin, “Because Page was working for Trump at the time, and Dvorkovich has a direct line to Vladimir Putin.”
Any fact-based investigation into the Uranium One transaction should closely examine the links between Rosatom’s former upper-management and their ties to the Republican Party and Trump Campaign.
https://thesternfacts.com/carter-page-m ... cdfa078642
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Carter Page

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Nov 01, 2017 6:42 pm

"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Carter Page

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Thu Nov 02, 2017 5:30 pm

Seven hours into Carter Page interview, Rep. Speier steps out and says “it’s gonna be awhile.”

The transcript of this hearing will be wild.

https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/ ... 8981150725


Carter Page has invoked the 5th, on his own without a lawyer, regarding document production, says House Intel member Speier. Which documents? "Any documents," she tells me.

https://twitter.com/HouseInSession/stat ... 0259585024


I can't wait to read the transcript three days from now.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: Carter Page

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:02 pm

oh man I got to catch up ...take a few minutes off and.....BAM!

Kushner Page and Mercer ........and PENCE......and SESSIONS...........oh my :yay


Will the circle be unbroken by and by lord by and by


Exclusive: Carter Page testifies he told Sessions about Russia trip
By Manu Raju and Jeremy Herb, CNN
Updated 7:53 PM EDT, Thu November 02, 2017

(CNN) Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page privately testified Thursday that he mentioned to Jeff Sessions he was traveling to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign — as new questions emerge about the attorney general's comments to Congress about Russia and the Trump campaign.

During more than six hours of closed-door testimony, Page said that he informed Sessions about his coming July 2016 trip to Russia, which Page told CNN was unconnected to his campaign role. Page described the conversation to CNN after he finished talking to the House intelligence committee.

Sessions' discussion with Page will fuel further scrutiny about what the attorney general knew about connections between the Trump campaign and Russia — and communications about Russia that he did not disclose despite a persistent line of questioning in three separate hearings this year.


Page's testimony was one of the more highly anticipated events in the congressional Russia investigations, given the scrutiny he's faced because of his connections to Russia and his visible role pushing back about his Russia ties in nationally televised interviews.

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican who is leading the House intelligence committees Russia probe, confirmed to CNN that Page told the committee he had informed Sessions about his trip, though Conaway downplayed its significance.

"I don't make anything sinister out of it. He said Sessions did not react or comment one way or the other," Conaway said in an interview. "If I were Sessions, I wouldn't have recalled it either. It was just in passing. He was walking out of the room. A guy he had never met before, grabs him, 'Hey, I'm out on the team. I changed my travel plans to go to Russia.'"

Page told CNN after the interview that he informed Sessions about the trip during a group dinner in Washington, and that he mentioned it in passing.

"Back in June 2016, I mentioned in passing that I happened to be planning to give a speech at a university in Moscow," Page told CNN. "Completely unrelated to my limited volunteer role with the campaign and as I've done dozens of times throughout my life. Understandably, it was as irrelevant then as it is now. If it weren't for the dodgy dossier and all the chaos that those complete lies had created, my passing comment's complete lack of relevance should go without saying."

Page said it was the only time he met Sessions.

A source familiar with the meeting told CNN that the encounter occurred at a dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, attended by members of the Trump national security team, including Sessions. Near the end of the dinner, Page approached Sessions to say hello and thanked the then-senator for the dinner, and Page also mentioned he was headed to Russia. Sessions didn't respond and moved on to the next person waiting to shake his hand, this source said.

A Justice spokesperson declined to comment.

Several lawmakers from both parties described the session as meandering, at-times confusing and contradictory. Page did not have a lawyer present, which is highly unusual, lawmakers said.

Conaway said that Page was "fulsome" in his answers and he answered all of the questions the committee asked.

Moreover, Page reached a rare agreement to allow the committee to release a transcript of his testimony, something that will happen early next week. Some members said his testimony will help move the investigation forward, though Page told the committee that the Trump campaign made him sign a non-disclosure agreement.

"It was terrific to have the opportunity to help clear the record as to the falsehoods from the dodgy dossier, which started this whole thing against me in the final two months before the election," Page told reporters after his marathon session, referring to the Trump-Russia dossier produced by former British agent Christopher Steele. "I'm glad the truth is finally becoming known."


Page interacted with Sessions because the then-Alabama senator was leading the national security team for the Trump campaign.

Sessions is already facing new questions over his testimony on Capitol Hill about Russia and the Trump campaign following the revelations this week that he rejected a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed by foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty for making a false statement to the FBI about contacts with people connected with the Russian government.

At a June Senate intelligence committee hearing, Sessions testified that he wasn't aware of any conversations between "anyone connected to the Trump campaign" and Russians about "any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States."

In another exchange with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Sessions was asked if Page met with Russian officials "at any point during the campaign."

"I don't know," Sessions responded.

Asked at a Senate hearing last month whether he believed Trump campaign surrogates had communications with Russians, Sessions replied, "I did not and I'm not aware of anyone else that did, and I don't believe it happened."

Democrats on the Senate intelligence and judiciary committees are interested in formally asking Sessions to clarify his testimony, according to a Senate aide.

Page traveled to Moscow for a few days in early July 2016, where he gave a lecture critical of US foreign policy and later met with Russians whom he described as academic scholars and business leaders. He has said that the topic of sanctions might have come up in his conversations but that he was not there as an emissary of the Trump campaign. After the trip, the FBI grew concerned that he had been compromised by Russian operatives, US officials previously told CNN.

The committee has asked Page to produce more documents, according to members, to comply with the subpoena they previously issued.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/11/02/poli ... index.html
Last edited by seemslikeadream on Thu Nov 02, 2017 8:06 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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