Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by dada » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:21 pm
seemslikeadream » Tue Feb 06, 2018 4:41 pm wrote:I actually thought it was photo shopped....I don't lie
by Burnt Hill » Tue Feb 06, 2018 9:48 pm
dada wrote:We shouldn't let the kids see slad and dada fighting.
by seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:30 am
(THREAD) We now know that there's a *second* memo—one members of the media and law enforcement have seen—that alleges clandestine and possibly illicit behavior by Trump. This thread contains everything you need to know about the Shearer Memo. I hope you'll share this with others.
6:22 PM - 5 Feb 2018
1/ Unlike Steele, Cody Shearer—a former journalist—doesn't have a background in espionage. Moreover, he's an avowed activist with known ties to the Clintons. For this reason, his research on Trump was originally viewed with skepticism by media and the FBI. Then something changed.
2/ As we consider the Shearer Memo, we must *avoid* the logic fallacy that Trump and Nunes would like us to fall into—what logicians call the "genetic fallacy." The genetic fallacy occurs when one bases conclusions solely on where information came from, not whether it's accurate.
3/ Steele's an ex-MI6 Russia desk chief with the best sources in Russia a Western spy could develop—so there's reason to think his intel is largely accurate. That *doesn't* me that I or anyone else interested in his dossier don't think the FBI should seek to corroborate his work.
4/ The same goes for Shearer—in reverse. There's every reason to think he had partisan motives in conducting oppo research on Trump, but so too does *every* such researcher even loosely connected to a political entity or party. The question always remains: is the intel accurate?
5/ Inaccurate intel is easily dismissed by those who appear in it, as even if it's taken seriously it usually makes time, place, and other errors that let it be disproven with documents, alibis, and more. Yet Trump and Nunes are acting like they're *terrified* of Shearer's memo.
6/ We know that the memo—which was first reported on by The Guardian—makes allegations regarding Trump's financial dealings and personal conduct. Had Trump released his tax returns, he'd have a much, much easier time responding to any allegations regarding his business dealings.
7/ Instead, Trump refused to release his tax returns and refutes allegations about his business deals in one of three ways: (1) ignoring them; (2) using a blanket term (e.g., "hoax") to dismiss them without dealing with their particulars; or (3) trying to destroy their authors.
8/ With Shearer, it seems Trump will select Option #3—trying to destroy Shearer and anyone associated with him, including a mere courier of his memo (Obama's Libya envoy—a former aide to potential 2020 presidential candidate John Kerry). And he's willing to risk a *lot* to do so.
9/ Nunes, Trump's stooge in Congress and an ex-member of his presidential transition—therefore, a man who should be *nowhere near any aspect of the Trump-Russia probe*—lacks the jurisdiction to use the Intel Committee to oversee the State Department, but he's going to try anyway.
10/ Note that Nunes' plan isn't to address any aspect of the Shearer Memo itself—the same trick he played with the Steele Dossier. Instead, he tries to smear the memo not just by smearing its author but by smearing anyone who ever looked at it, passed it on, or took it seriously.
11/ In this way, Trump and Nunes dismiss and discredit intelligence without ever asking *whether it's accurate*.
By implying that even handling this intelligence is something akin to a major federal felony, they leave the impression that *no one* could believe such allegations.
12/ The problem Trump and Nunes keep running into is that very smart, professional people *keep believing these allegations*. It's not because they're all part of a big left-wing conspiracy—it's because they avoid the genetic fallacy and simply ask whether the intel's *accurate*.
13/ Thus: "The Guardian has been told the FBI investigation is still assessing details in the memo and is pursuing intriguing leads. One source with knowledge of the inquiry said the fact the FBI is still working on it suggests investigators have taken an aspect of it seriously."
14/ Federal investigators get a *lot* of tips. Most can be dismissed out-of-hand because they don't track with the intel investigators already have. New intel doesn't get pursued *unless it tracks with existing intel held by investigators and—as importantly—known to be accurate*.
15/ So the FBI received the Shearer Memo in October 2016. And it's still being looked at by the FBI in *February 2018*. That's stunning. Apparently *16 months* of FBI investigators looking at the Memo have not yet managed to discredit it to the point at which it can be discarded.
16/ And here's the best part: we *know* why the FBI is still looking at the Shearer Memo 16 months on. The reason? Though it was compiled via a wholly separate research process, and with different methods and sources, it makes *many of the same allegations as the Steele dossier*.
17/ That's right: every indication is the Shearer Memo confirms many parts of the Steele Dossier—and in this way helps to deteriorate the fanciful Trump-Nunes argument that the FBI has never corroborated any part of Steele's research or had any reason to consider it corroborated.
18/ What Nunes will hang his hat on—in trying to oversee someone at the State Department passing the Shearer Memo along—is that Jonathan Winer (Obama's Libya envoy) received the memo from Shearer and passed it on to Steele, who then passed it on to the FBI (at the FBI's request).
19/ The FBI asked Steele to turn over any docs he had relevant to his work. At that time, he had the Shearer Memo—which had nothing to do (i.e., had in no way informed) his own research—so he passed it over and candidly said it confirmed his research but he couldn't vouch for it.
20/ Almost certainly, Nunes—who *should* be asking why active FBI agents were leaking to Rudy Giuliani in October '16, by Giuliani's own admission on national television—will try to allege that Winer violated the Hatch Act by participating in political activity. And that's bogus.
21/ It's bogus because the allegations in the Shearer Memo—like the allegations in the Steele Dossier—are *not* opposition research in the way we've traditionally understood it. Why? They suggest criminal conduct and the possibility Trump has been compromised by a foreign power.
22/ Anyone passing on the Shearer Memo—or for that matter, the Steele Dossier—to the appropriate authorities so it can be investigated and corroborated by trained professionals is a *whistleblower*. Rudy's pals in the New York office of the FBI were partisan punks with an agenda.
23/ If Winer knew Steele was working with the FBI—and he almost *certainly* knew Steele had partnered with them *before*—passing on Shearer's memo was ensuring that it got properly investigated. Meanwhile, the FBI leaks to Rudy comprised exclusively *knowingly false* information.
24/ So, compare:
(1) A civilian passes on info he can't vouch for—but that looks serious—to the appropriate authorities. That's okay.
(2) The appropriate authorities pass on information they know to be false to a Trump advisor to aid a disinformation campaign. That's not okay.
25/ Devin Nunes—a Trump agent in Congress—is going to investigate the former and not the latter.
That's *stunning*—particularly given that he *does* have oversight powers over the latter situation, and clearly does *not* have oversight powers over the former.
26/ So here's what the Shearer memo says, per The Guardian (a top UK outlet): "[It] alleges Trump was compromised during a 2013 trip to Moscow that involved lewd acts in a five-star hotel. The Shearer memo cites an unnamed source within Russia’s FSB, the state security service."
27/ This means the "salacious" allegation on pg. 1 of the Steele dossier has now been confirmed many, *many* times over.
Steele's sources say it's true. Shearer's sources say it's true. A Trump Org employee, Kata Sarka, and a Ritz Moscow guest can all confirm major parts of it.
28/ The CIA and two EU intel agencies have confirmed it. Schiller confirms a major part of the story (that a Russian offered to send women to Trump's room—presumably the same ones seen in the lobby—arguing about going up to his room—by a Ritz Moscow guest and Trump Org employee).
29/ Kata Sarka's story—told before the Steele dossier came out—confirms Trump is lying about how careful he was (as to his bedroom conduct) while in Moscow. And we know the best friend of the Russian who offered Trump prostitutes runs—wait for it—Moscow's largest online brothel.
30/ We know from Stormy Daniels that Trump engages in extramarital sexual exploits without any care at all for whether they can be used to blackmail him in the future. And we know that—when blackmailed—he pays his blackmailers and generously. And we know Putin collects kompromat.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 7313401868
by seemslikeadream » Wed Feb 07, 2018 1:09 pm
Seth Abramson
(THREAD) If you're wondering when Donald Trump can—or can't—plead the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering Mueller's questions, this is the thread for you.
It's a complicated issue, so as an attorney I'll try to unpack it in a digestible way. I hope you'll share this with others.
9:12 PM - 6 Feb 2018
1/ First, understand that the Fifth Amendment *isn't* a magic wand—a witness in a civil or criminal case who wants to avoid answering questions for a frivolous reason such as inconvenience or a fear of public speaking can't simply say "Fifth Amendment!" and walk off with a smirk.
2/ An attorney can only advise a client to plead the Fifth Amendment when the requisite constitutional standard has been met: that the witness has a reasonable basis to believe that a responsive answer to a given question could incriminate them (i.e., lead to criminal charges).
3/ Note that nothing that follows in this thread should be construed as legal advice by any person or entity. If you need legal assistance, contact an attorney in your area. The discussion that follows here is for academic purposes only, and is not directed to—or for—any reader.
4/ The Fifth Amendment cannot be used to protect a person against embarrassment, inconvenience, or even a civil lawsuit. The danger that the person who wishes to plead the Fifth Amendment must apprehend in refusing to answer a given question *must* be *criminal prosecution*.
5/ Needless to say, while an attorney can only advise a client to plead the Fifth Amendment under appropriate circumstances, and s/he must advise them that they cannot plead the Fifth under inappropriate circumstances, the individual wishing to plead the Fifth gets the final say.
6/ The reason for this is that a lawyer never knows for certain what a client has or hasn't done—and therefore can't compel a client to *not* plead the Fifth when the client is saying that they have every right to do so under the law (as it has explained to them by their lawyer).
7/ Right now you might be wondering, "Okay, but if the client gets the final say, why can't Donald Trump just ignore whatever advice his attorneys may give about how the Fifth Amendment works or doesn't work and just use it to avoid answering questions he doesn't want to answer?"
8/ The first distinction we must make is between *defendants* and *witnesses* in criminal cases. In sum, a defendant—someone who has actually been *charged with a crime*—has a much, much broader opportunity to plead the Fifth Amendment than does a mere witness in a criminal case.
9/ A defendant, in pleading the Fifth Amendment, avoids being asked *any* questions by a prosecutor (or a criminal suspect who is in custody *and* being interrogated can, by asserting their Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, shut down any unwanted questioning).
10/ For a prosecutor to get testimony from a person they've charged who's now taken the Fifth, they must grant them immunity (there are a few other obscure scenarios in which it might be possible, but for our purposes immunity is the main one, though irrelevant in Trump's case).
11/ I say it's "irrelevant in Trump's case" because *Trump isn't a defendant*. He's merely a witness. And witnesses who've been subpoenaed to testify can't issue a blanket refusal to answer questions pursuant to the Fifth Amendment—they must do so on a question-by-question basis.
12/ Having said this, if a prosecutor thinks a person they haven't charged with a crime is likely to *validly* plead the Fifth in response to almost *any* question the prosecutor would hope to ask, the prosecutor may excuse the witness from pleading the Fifth before a grand jury.
13/ Just so, if a prosecutor plans on charging a witness—thus making them a defendant—they're unlikely to, before doing so, attempt to call the witness to testify before a grand jury, and may even be prevented from doing so by various regulations. That may be the case with Trump.
14/ That said, nothing prevents a prosecutor from calling a witness to testify before a grand jury and deciding later on it's appropriate to charge them (assuming this wasn't the plan all along). Depending on the charge Mueller is looking at, Trump could be in this boat as well.
15/ Here's what I mean: as to the Obstruction charge against Trump Mueller is investigating, as it's clear Mueller intends to or is seriously considering charging Trump with Obstruction, his ability to subpoena him before a grand jury to answer questions on that may be limited.
16/ On the other hand, there may be other charges—such as potential aiding and abetting computer crimes charges against Don Jr.—for which Trump is at this point simply a relevant witness. Mueller's free rein to seek answers from Trump about that scenario could be quite different.
17/ What complicates all this is Trump has even attempted to illegally cover up crimes *he* didn't commit—e.g., writing a false statement for Don Jr.—and many answers he could give as a witness on one issue would provide Mueller info that might incriminate him on something else.
18/ My point is that when lawyers on television imply that Trump can avoid any questioning from Mueller by (a) refusing to conduct a voluntary interview, and then (b) responding to any subsequent grand jury subpoena by pleading the Fifth, they're saying Trump's guilty all around.
19/ That is, they're saying—without saying it—they think Trump's guilty of Obstruction as to all potential charges Mueller is investigating *and* that Trump headed up a criminal conspiracy, meaning almost any answer he gives on anything Mueller's looking at would incriminate him.
20/ The reverse of this is if Trump, as a witness—not a defendant or target-lettered witness—tries to plead the Fifth for *all* questions Mueller may ask him, and his attorneys don't move to withdraw in protest, it *is* making a major statement about what crimes Trump committed.
21/ What Trump could do, instead, is refuse a voluntary interview, dare Mueller to subpoena him, try to quash the subpoena (mainly a delaying tactic) with a farcical claim that POTUSes can't be subpoenaed, then agree to testify but say he'll plead the Fifth on *certain* subjects.
22/ Again, this is all assuming Mueller hasn't charged Trump with anything and has not yet made the *decision* to charge him with something—as if either of those two things have happened, regs would prevent Mueller from attempting to get testimony from Trump as to those charges.
23/ You may, from all I've said, have intuited the following: that if Mueller is nevertheless trying to get testimony from Trump, it must be because he considers Trump a necessary witness in his investigation and has not yet made a final charging decision as to (say) Obstruction.
24/ Just so, Trump's lawyers may be keeping him from speaking to Mueller not only because Trump is a Perjury machine—he can't help but lie, even under oath—but also because they think either Mueller won't subpoena Trump or Trump will have a valid Fifth Amendment claim if he does.
25/ Moreover, Trump's lawyers could claim that if Trump has a valid Fifth assertion as to the Obstruction charge because Mueller has signaled such a charge is forthcoming, he can refuse to answer *any* questions Mueller may have—even on other topics—as they could incriminate him.
26/ Indeed, if you told me right now Mueller *will* refer an Obstruction charge on Trump to the DOJ—which I fully believe is the case—it'd be hard for me to imagine *any* questions Mueller could then ask Trump, on any issue, which wouldn't put him in danger of self-incrimination.
27/ And of course in that scenario there's a good chance either DOJ regs or Trump's rights as a prospective defendant would—respectively—keep Mueller from subpoenaing him or allow Trump to make a blanket Fifth Amendment assertion, anyway.
So you see how complicated this all is.
28/ In the unlikely event that Mueller successfully subpoenaed Trump under an understanding that Trump was just a witness in the non-Obstruction case Mueller was then investigating, and would only assert the Fifth as to questions relating to Obstruction, here's how it would work:
29/ Mueller would be able to challenge any Fifth Amendment assertion Trump made from the witness stand before a grand jury if he believed the assertion was made on a topic entirely unrelated to Obstruction (the issue Trump's lawyers would've told Mueller Trump won't speak about).
30/ Of course, Trump's lawyers wouldn't be able to advise him to plead the Fifth on a non-Obstruction question in that scenario (presumably, Trump would ask to check in with his lawyers—who wouldn't be in the room—were he asked a question and unsure if he could plead the Fifth).
31/ If Trump and his lawyers agreed Trump could plead the Fifth in response to a given non-Obstruction question and Mueller then disputed the validity of Trump's assertion, theoretically Mueller could seek a Motion to Compel from a judge—arguing improper invocation of the Fifth.
32/ Here's what you should have taken from this thread so far:
(1) This is all so f*cking confusing that there's a *damn good reason* no legal pundit on TV is willing to touch the "Can Trump invoke the Fifth in this situation?" question.
(2) Trump is unlikely *ever* to testify.
33/ I'll start with the first of those observations. Because pundits don't know who Mueller plans to charge—or for what—and whether Trump will be a witness or defendant by the time Mueller finally wins the right (after, presumably, a court battle) to subpoena him, all is in flux.
34/ Mueller could be prevented from subpoenaing Trump by regs; could—though unlikely—lose in court when he tries to subpoena him; Trump could assert a blanket Fifth Amendment claim as the presumed target of an Obstruction investigation; Mueller could've referred a charge by then.
35/ At the same time, we don't *know* if those things can or will happen, which is why legal pundits aren't going on TV and very clearly saying, "He should just refuse a voluntary interview because there's no way Mueller can ever compel him to testify." They're *not* saying that.
36/ What they *are* saying is that Trump shouldn't agree to a voluntary interview because he's a Perjury machine, refusing such an interview leaves him one less battle to fight, and he might have very good cause to *refuse to testify* by the time Mueller tries a subpoena on him.
37/ That last point explains, in part, the second observation I just made: Trump will never testify in the Mueller investigation, under oath or otherwise. He simply has too many mechanisms to avoid doing so, as long as he's willing to take the political hit of pleading the Fifth.
38/ Ironically, the hit Trump takes in pleading the Fifth really *should* be much, much bigger than I think it *will* be, as if he somehow successfully manages a blanket Fifth invocation when he's still just a witness, he's essentially saying he's guilty of a sh*t-ton of charges.
39/ For Mueller to escape the Fifth Amendment catch-22 he's now in, he'd have to do everything in his power to ensure that Trump appears to be no more than a witness in his probe, and then fight on a question-by-question basis to get Trump to answer any non-Obstruction questions.
40/ The ship has already sailed on Mueller getting Trump to answer questions relating to Obstruction; Trump can and will plead the Fifth in response to any such questions, all the while claiming that he's innocent and the whole Obstruction investigation is a political witch hunt.
41/ His argument *won't* be that he didn't obstruct Mueller's probe—it'll be (and we've already seen Trump preview this argument) that Mueller is only thinking of charging him with Obstruction because he couldn't find anything else, and Trump is therefore *right* to obstruct him.
42/ Hopefully it goes without saying that this argument spits in the face of our rule of law. You can't, in fact, obstruct an investigation just because you think it's bogus. If you could, every defendant in America would be obstructing the *hell* out of every case against them.
43/ But Trump's base—many of whom once claimed to be "law-and-order" voters—will go with his anarchistic argument, anyway. They'll say that Trump was *right* to plead the Fifth Amendment in the face of bogus Obstruction charges. "He damn well *should've* obstructed!" they'll say.
44/ My point is that you're wrong if you think the Fifth is a magic wand that can just get Trump out of answering any questions he doesn't feel like answering. But you're *also* wrong if you think Trump can't use the Fifth to avoid answering questions *under these circumstances*.
45/ And the *very* thing that allows Trump to use the Fifth under these circumstances is the thing that will do him in over the long run: HE IS GUILTY.
Not just of Obstruction, but of Conspiracy relating to computer crimes, election law, money laundering and possibly far worse.
46/ That's why, when Trump pleads the Fifth—even if he's just a witness, and should only have a limited opportunity to invoke it on a question-by-question basis—you will see that his invocation is *very, very broad*. And yes, that *will* indicate that he's guilty of a great deal.
47/ Legally speaking, a *jury* can't presume guilt as a result of a defendant invoking the Fifth Amendment. But understand this—that's merely what attorneys call a "trial presumption." In the court of public opinion, we've *every* right to judge Trump for an over-broad assertion.
48/ My read of things is that Bob Mueller has enough to charge Trump with Obstruction *now* (or, under the circumstances, which per the DOJ regs and holdings he's bound by prevent him from indicting a sitting president, "enough to refer an indictment for Obstruction to the DOJ").
49/ So I think the only reason Mueller is holding back on referring Trump for Obstruction is he still might be able to trick Trump's lawyers into letting him talk to Trump—a slim chance depending almost entirely on Trump being too vain, delusional or political to plead the Fifth.
50/ I said earlier I "can't wait" for Trump to testify under oath. I also know I'll *have* to wait—likely forever—as there's almost *no* chance it will happen.
But if Mueller needs any final confirmation—in his heart—that Trump committed Obstruction, that invocation will do it.
CONCLUSION/ Trump will be referred to DOJ for an impeachable offense, and his refusal to testify on Obstruction will inadvertently reveal—if his recent Manafort comments didn't already—that he committed many crimes beyond Obstruction. Because—guess what—he sure as hell did.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 7640288256
by seemslikeadream » Thu Feb 08, 2018 9:37 pm
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner texted with Russian oligarch lobbyist in effort to contact dossier author Christopher Steele
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02 ... teele.html
Julian Assange offered 'news' on Mark Warner to fake Sean Hannity Twitter account: Report
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/julia ... le/2647461
seemslikeadream » Mon Jan 29, 2018 10:08 pm wrote:Seth Abramson
BREAKING: This exchange, between a Twitter user posing as Sean Hannity and WikiLeaks, confirms WikiLeaks has been in contact with Hannity—a Trump advisor. This is the second WikiLeaks-Trump contact we know of; the other are pre-election contacts between WikiLeaks and Trump's son.
2/ Hannity now becomes a witness in Special Counsel Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation. As with Jeanine Pirro—another Trump advisor nightly using a Fox News perch to thwart the Mueller investigation—it's not clear how or why Fox News lets Hannity keep discussing the probe, now.SLIDIN’ INTO DMS
Julian Assange Thought He Was Messaging Sean Hannity When He Offered ‘News’ on Democrat Investigating Trump-Russia
The head of Wikileaks told @SeanHannity__ to seek ‘other channels’ for information on Sen. Mark Warner. Turns out ‘@SeanHannity__’ was a woman in Texas.
BEN COLLINS
01.29.18 8:16 PM ET
At about 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, a couple hours after she started pretending to be Sean Hannity, Dell Gilliam says she got a direct message back from the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. That’s when she said she “kind of panicked.”
“I felt bad. He really thought he was talking to Sean Hannity,” said Gilliam.
Gilliam, a technical writer from Texas, was bored with the flu when she created @SeanHannity__ early Saturday morning. The Fox News host's real account was temporarily deleted after cryptically tweeting the phrase “Form Submission 1649 | #Hannity” on Friday night. Twitter said the account had been “briefly compromised,” according to a statement provided to The Daily Beast, and was back up on Sunday morning.
When Gilliam made the account, she did not expect to be setting up a meeting over “other channels” for Assange to send “some news about Warner,” an apparent reference to Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.
During the election, WikiLeaks’ dumped Democratic emails stolen by Kremlin hackers, even leading President Donald Trump’s CIA director to brand Assange’s organization a “hostile intelligence service” last year.
Just minutes after @SeanHannity disappeared, several accounts quickly sprung up posing as the real Hannity, shouting from Twitter exile. None were as successful as Gilliam’s @SeanHannity__ account, which has since amassed over 24,000 followers.
Gilliam then used her newfound prominence to direct message Assange as Hannity within hours.
“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean… I can. It’s crazy. Nothing can be put past people,” Gilliam, posing as Hannity, wrote to Assange. “I’m exhausted from the whole night. What about you, though? You doing ok?”
“I’m happy as long as there is a fight!” Assange responded.
Gilliam reassured Assange that she, or Hannity, was also “definitely up for a fight” and set up a call for 9:30 a.m. Eastern, about six hours later.
“You can send me messages on other channels,” said Assange, the second reference to “other channels” he made since their conversation began.
“Have some news about Warner.”
Less than 48 hours later, Warner made headlines claiming that the Senate intelligence committee received “end-of-the-year document dumps” that “opened a lot of new questions” about Trump and Russia.
When reached by The Daily Beast about the messages, Warner’s spokesperson pointed to WikiLeaks’ ties to the release of recent document drops performed by Russian entities, like Kremlin cutout Guccifer 2.0.
“Give me a break. WikiLeaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service with longstanding ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence.”
DELL GILLIAM
DELL GILLIAM
While Assange was not the only high-profile person duped by the account, his interactions with it were likely the most significant.
Citing mysterious sources and to-be-revealed bombshells, Hannity has been alleging he will unveil “the biggest scandal in American history” for weeks on his primetime Fox News show that has devolved into mostly a recitation of conspiracy theories about a “secret society” and the “deep state.”
Both Hannity and Assange’s WikiLeaks have pushed similar document drops and hashtag campaigns since before the 2016 election, most recently the push to release a confidential memo about government spying under the hashtag “#releasethememo.” Last year, Hannity even invited Assange to guest host his radio program. Both participated in baseless speculation about the murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich, which Hannity later dropped after advertisers dropped his program.
Leaked Twitter correspondences between Donald Trump Jr. and the official WikiLeaks account made headlines in November of 2017. Trump Jr. had not disclosed the direct messages until after the November report by The Atlantic.
Hannity, Assange and Fox News public relations did not respond to a request for comment.
“You can send me messages on other channels. Have some news about Warner.”
— Julian Assange
This was not Gilliam’s plan when she created the account on Saturday morning. In fact, she said she didn’t really know much about Sean Hannity when it all started. Gilliam said she watches Fox News, NPR, and CNN in equal parts, had “intentionally ignored [Hannity] because he seems to have no respect from anybody on either side except for Trump.”
She said she simply wanted to play a joke on another Sean Hannity account, @SeanHannity_, with one underscore and not two.
“It kind of started on a whim. I was going to tweet at one of the fake Sean Hannity accounts that was up to tell them not to be me,” she said.
Then, in part because Gilliam seemed to have picked up on Hannity’s conspiratorial and frenzied voice, things picked up fast.
“I don’t even really know how [Hannity] sounds, so I started by copying the tone of the first fake one,” she said.
It worked.
“To all the lib haters, know that I am back and here to stay. You can’t silence the truth and you have no idea what’s coming,” her first tweet read. “To all my loyal supporters - follow me on my new account to stay updated. Twitter can try to knock us down but we will keep rising up! #SeanHannity”
That tweet, which had 1,800 retweets and 3,500 likes, was retweeted by dozens of verified journalists and Twitter personalities.
Chrissy Teigen took a shot at Gilliam’s version of Hannity in front of her 9.67 million followers.
“Settle down, braveheart,” she wrote. Over 8,000 people retweeted it.
Gilliam’s experience as a bureaucrat, whose interest in fine print is “interesting to me, but nobody else,” helped her monopolize the fake Hannity space.
“I realized that in the Twitter rules it says you can’t make a fake account unless you say you’re not affiliated with that person,” she said.
Under @SeanHannity__’s bio, it reads “(Above not affiliated with) New Account!” She remained live while SeanHannity_ with one underscore and several others were booted off the service.
“People don’t read parentheticals,” she said.
Gilliam said she plans on keeping the account going, or donating her 24,000 followers to an environmental nonprofit she works with. She’s already tweeted out a YouTube video from a band she likes from Nashville to try to get them more followers.
Recovering from the flu, she didn’t sleep all of Saturday, reading through tweets by duped celebrities and mountains of messages.
“I’d say it’s one-third hate mail, one-third hero worship, one-third people saying they figured it out. His followers are disturbingly angry,” she said.
“Reading the messages, I can see how believing in this false reality would be really easy to do. I was starting to get really nervous about what was really happening. It all sucks you into a level of paranoia I’d never seen before.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-as ... ia=desktop
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 09, 2018 9:40 am
Unrolled thread from @ndrew_lawrence
9 tweets 13 hours ago
Um, HOLY SHIT
But remember a week ago when Assange tried to DM Hannity with dirt on Mark Warner
Guess where "leaked texts" from Mark Warner just showed up
Fox News is working with Julian Assange to disrupt the 2018 election and I dunno how else you can explain this
"There are brand new text messages obtained exclusively by Fox News..."
Yea, I wonder how these texts were obtained
This is the same network that for the past week has been claiming that a lawfully obtained FISA warrant against Carter Page was a violation of his privacy
A week and a half ago:
Here's the full Fox News report. They say they got the texts from a "Republican source" which seems like weird wording to me
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner texted with Russian oligarch lobbyist in effort to contact dossier author Christopher Steele
Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has been leading a congressional investigation into President Trump's alleged ties to Russia, had extensive contact last ye…
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02 ... teele.html
It's weird how this stuff came out the same day the Porter stuff came out...kinda like the way the DNC emails came out the same day the Access Hollywood tape dropped
I'm sure Julian Assange is proud
Just realized I never included a link to the reporting by @oneunderscore__ in this thread...this is the story that exposed the original Hannity/Assange contact
Julian Assange Offered Hannity Impersonator News About Top Democrat
The head of Wikileaks told @SeanHannity__ to seek ‘other channels’ for information on Sen. Mark Warner of the Trump-Russia investigation. ‘@SeanHannity__’ was a woman in Texas.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-as ... essaging-s
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/9617 ... 24416.html
‘They Protected An Abuser’
By David Kurtz | February 8, 2018 4:22 pm
You can measure how badly the White House is handling the Rob Porter abuse case by watching the incensed reaction of Amanda Carpenter, a former staffer to Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), just now on CNN.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYqRTRocf1Y
WH Doesn’t Deny Reports It Knew About Allegations Of Ex-Staffer’s Abuse
By Matt Shuham | February 8, 2018 4:04 pm
UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 01: Rob Porter, right, White House staff secretary, and Don McGahn, White House counsel, attend a luncheon featuring a speech by President Donald Trump at the House and Senate Republican retreat at The Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., on February 1, 2018. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Group
The White House on Thursday did not deny reports that top Trump administration officials knew that ousted White House staff secretary Rob Porter had been accused by multiple women of domestic abuse.
Rather, White House spokesperson Raj Shah said that White House chief of staff John Kelly “became fully aware” of the allegations on Wednesday. He refused to get further into specifics.
“He had not seen images prior to the statement on Tuesday night,” Shah said.
A reporter pressed: What did “fully aware” mean? What did Kelly know about the allegations before a Tuesday night report in the Daily Mail broke the story publicly?
“Again, I’m not going to get into the specifics of what may have emerged from the investigation,” Shah said, not denying reports that Kelly — who vouched for Porter even after the first reports surfaced publicly — knew about the allegations of abuse well before this week.
Separately, a reporter asked how White House officials had stood behind Porter even after Porter had said in a statement that he had personally taken the photos of his ex-wife showing apparent signs of domestic abuse — namely, a black eye.
“I think it’s fair to say that we all could have done better over the last few hours— or last few days in dealing with this situation,” Shah said. “But, you know, this was the Rob Porter that I and many others have dealt with. That Sarah dealt with, that other officials including the chief of staff have dealt with, and the emerging reports were not reflective of the individual we had come to know.”
Shah said Porter’s background investigation was “ongoing” at the time of his resignation, and that he was working on an interim security clearance during his time at the White House. Wednesday was Porter’s last day, Shah said.
“Over the course of any investigation, some information may arise that seems troubling or complicated and requires additional investigating,” Shah said at the top of the briefing, reading a description of the background check process from a prepared remark. “It’s important to allow that process to continue in order for a fulsome understanding of the information.”
He added later: “It’s important to remember that Rob Porter has repeatedly denied these allegations and done so publicly. That doesn’t change how serious and disturbing these allegations are. They’re upsetting. And the background check investigates both the allegations and the denials.”
This post has been updated.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... fers-abuse
Politico: Kelly Knew Porter’s Security Clearance Would Be Denied Weeks Ago
By Caitlin MacNeal | February 9, 2018 7:39 am
on May 2, 2017 in Washington, DC.Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America
White House chief of staff John Kelly learned several weeks ago that multiple white House aides, including staff secretary Rob Porter, would be denied full security clearances, Politico reported Thursday night, citing an unnamed administration official.
Kelly planned to fire those who were denied security clearances, but had not yet done so, according to Politico.
The chief of staff has come under intense scrutiny this week over the White House’s handling of public allegations from Porter’s ex-wives that he abused them. When the allegations first surfaced on Tuesday, the White House, including Kelly, stood by Porter and defended his character.
By Thursday, Porter had left the White House permanently as attention on the abuse allegations increased. White House spokesman Raj Shah admitted Thursday that the administration “could have done better” in responding to the accusations about Porter’s past behavior.
Kelly learned some time in the fall that abuse allegations from Porter’s ex-wives were holding up his security clearance, but the chief of staff did not act to investigate the matter at the time, according to the Washington Post.
White House Counsel Don McGahn was also aware of the allegations but did not act. McGahn learned that Rob Porter’s ex-wives were going to make negative allegations about him about a year ago, and discovered more specifics about the accusations as the year went on, but he never initiated a review of the staff secretary before he resigned this week, the Washington Post reported Thursday night. In June, the FBI told the White House about the accusations, but it’s not clear whether that news reached McGahn. The White House counsel learned in the fall that abuse allegations were delaying Porter’s security clearance, but he agreed that Porter should stay on, per the Washington Post.
In November, an ex-girlfriend of Porter’s contacted McGahn to warn him about allegations of domestic abuse, but the White House counsel again didn’t act, according the Washington Post.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... -clearance
‘A Bit Of A Mystery’: Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance From Pence?
By Allegra Kirkland | February 9, 2018 6:00 am
Speculation about when and under what terms President Donald Trump might be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller has dominated the headlines ever since the two parties began talks in December.
But what about Vice President Mike Pence?
Pence was absent from many of the key incidents Mueller is reportedly investigating as part of his sprawling probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But he was intimately involved with several, including the firing of former FBI director James Comey, and the subsequent efforts to settle on a rationale for that firing, which appear to be at the center of the Mueller investigation.
So it’s puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration’s second-highest-ranking official. Pence’s lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence’s full cooperation.
“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Pence’s name hasn’t really surfaced at all,” Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department’s criminal division, told TPM. “There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I’m surprised.”
Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record, while the special counsel’s office declined comment. Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but in December forcefully denied to CNN that Pence’s office was preparing for a meeting with Mueller.
As of mid-January, NBC reported that the special counsel had made no overtures to Pence about an interview.
By now, over 20 White House officials have been interviewed, including top Trump allies like Jared Kushner, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Counsel Don McGahn. Former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon is scheduled to sit down with Mueller next week.
Former White House lawyers caution that much of what Mueller’s team is up to is happening far from the public eye. After all, one noted, no one saw the indictment of George Papadopoulos coming.
But they offer a few explanations for why Mueller appears to be keeping his distance from Pence, at least for now.
First, public reports have offered little indication that Pence is a target of the obstruction of justice, collusion, or money laundering arms of the Russia investigation.
“The reporting so far has revealed not much detail about Pence’s involvement in key events. It may be that, as he did in the case of the the voter fraud commission, he kept his distance and tried to cut his losses. So he will be a witness, but it is hard to say how central to to the case he will be,” Bob Bauer, White House Counsel under President Barack Obama, told TPM in an email.
Pence had not yet joined the team at the time of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between high-level campaign officials and Russians promising “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. He was at his son’s wedding in Indiana in late Dec. 2016 when Mike Flynn reached out to then-Russian-ambassador Sergey Kislyak to discuss Obama’s imposition of fresh economic sanctions on Russia. And Pence has maintained he was the last to learn about issues that were either widely reported, like Flynn’s unauthorized lobbying work for Turkey, or that other White House officials were aware of, like Flynn’s conversations with Russian officials during the transition.
Still, there are a few topics that the special counsel would “absolutely” want to talk to Pence about, said Adam Goldberg, White House special associate counsel under President Bill Clinton.
One is what Flynn told Pence about his Russia contacts in January 2016. Flynn was fired in mid-February. The White House has said the firing was because Flynn misled the Vice President about those contacts. But that explanation has generated skepticism, in part because McGahn and Trump reportedly knew by late January that Flynn had lied to both Pence and the FBI.
Mueller might also might want to talk about Pence’s involvement in the May 2017 deliberations over firing Comey. The New York Times reported that Trump informed the Vice President on May 8 that he planned to dismiss the FBI director, reading to him and several other senior officials from a draft memo laying out the case that Comey had mishandled the FBI’s Russia investigation. Trump was stopped from sending that memo out, the Times reported, and instead shifted the justification for Comey’s dismissal onto his handling of the Clinton email investigation. Pence conveyed the official line about Clinton to the press.
Still, as Goldberg noted, other witnesses have likely already provided extensive testimony on these topics, making obtaining Pence’s account less of a priority. Flynn, for example, is cooperating with the special counsel after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI in December.
“If they already have enough people who would testify and aren’t worried about Pence contradicting, from their perspective they’re just going to make a political judgment of, ‘Well we don’t need to go involve the Vice President; that might make us look more partisan,’” he said.
Goldberg, Baeur and Zeldin noted that Mueller’s team is digging through reams of evidence that the public simply doesn’t know about, and that could prompt further lines of questions for the Vice President.
Pence could also serve as a corroborating witness for whatever testimony Trump provides, if he ultimately opts to do so, Zeldin suggested.
But things could get awkward if an invitation is ultimately extended to the Vice President, even as Trump’s own attorneys are reportedly counseling the President not to talk.
“Unless Pence is concerned he’s done something wrong, Pence will appear before Mueller no matter what,” Goldberg said. “Because it’d be political suicide for him not to.”
We just don’t know what he might have to say.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker ... estigation
Report: WH Officials At First Blamed Porter Abuse Allegations On His Enemies
By Caitlin MacNeal | February 9, 2018 8:30 am
As White House officials prepared their initial response to public abuse allegations from staff secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives, some of them painted the accusations as part of a smear campaign from Porter’s enemies, the Daily Beast reported Thursday night.
Two White House officials told Sen. Orrin Hatch’s (R-UT) office that a forthcoming story from the Daily Mail with abuse allegations was the product of a “smear campaign” against Porter. The officials laid some of the blame on former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and claimed that he had been researching Porter’s past, per the Daily Beast. Both Lewandowski and Porter have dated White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.
Lewandowski denied to the Daily Beast that he was pushing the story about Porter’s alleged past domestic abuse.
“I’ve never had a bad word about Rob Porter,” Lewandowski told the Daily Beast. “I think he did a very good job, and I wish him the very best.”
Hatch’s office sent a statement praising Porter to the White House on Tuesday before the senator learned that Porter would be accused of physical abuse, per the Daily Beast. After Porter announced his resignation Wednesday, Hatch issued a new statement condemning domestic violence.
Porter has denied the allegations from the start and did so again when he announced his resignation on Wednesday. He told aides in the White House that his ex-wives were making up the stories, two White House officials told the New York Times. He also reportedly later claimed that the photo of one of his ex-wives with a black eye came after his wife was hit with a vase while the two were arguing over it, according to the Washington Post. It’s not clear what he told FBI investigators about his ex-wives’ allegations.
Since Porter’s resignation on Wednesday, when the White House was still circulating statements praising the White House aide, the administration has acknowledged that they handled the situation poorly.
“I think it’s fair to say that we all could have done better over the last few hours— or last few days in dealing with this situation,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said on Thursday.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ ... r-campaign
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 09, 2018 11:04 am
HOW THE WHITE HOUSE’S TOLERANCE FOR WIFE-BEATERS EXPOSED THAT IT WAS HARBORING COUNTERINTELLIGENCE THREATS
February 9, 2018/24 Comments/in Leak Investigations, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel
There are a lot of important lessons about the White House’s protection and promotion of Rob Porter even after the FBI informed the White House about his serial wife beating: about White House’s tolerance for conflicts, about John Kelly’s overblown competence. If you haven’t read Dahlia Lithwick’s piece on what it says about society’s response to domestic abuse more generally, absolutely do.
There are also multiple theories about how this all came to light, whether the recent girlfriend who learned of the abuse after talking to the ex-wives about Porter’s philandering made it happen, or whether the FBI did so in the wake of White House involvement in the Devin Nunes saga.
Whatever the answers to those issues, it’s now clear what just or is about to happen.
Last night, the WaPo answered a question that should have been answered at yesterday’s presser. There are dozens of people working in the White House who, like Porter, have not yet received clearance. Starting with the son-in-law that has been remapping the world while under active counterintelligence investigation for shaping policy in a way that may stave off familial bankruptcy.Dozens of White House employees are awaiting permanent security clearances and have been working for months with temporary approvals to handle sensitive information while the FBI continues to probe their backgrounds, according to U.S. officials.
People familiar with the security-clearance process said one of those White House officials with an interim approval is Jared Kushner — the president’s son-in-law and one of his most influential advisers.
Then Politico provided the other, even more critical piece of this puzzle: FBI already told the White House that Porter and others would not get security clearance. And there are witnesses that Kelly knew about these multiple White House aides and thought they should be fired.White House chief of staff John Kelly was told several weeks ago that the FBI would deny full security clearances to multiple White House aides who had been working in the West Wing on interim security clearances.
Those aides, according to a senior administration official, included former White House staff secretary Rob Porter, who left the White House on Thursday after reports that he physically and verbally abused his two ex-wives.
The White House chief-of-staff told confidants in recent weeks that he had decided to fire anyone who had been denied a clearance — but had yet to act on that plan before the Porter allegations were first reported this week.
I figure around about noon we’ll learn Jared was one of the others.
Remember: according to Supreme Court precedent, the President has final authority on matters of clearance. So if Trump wants to override the FBI’s determination, he can. Which he might get away with so long as it remained secret, so long as the press didn’t know that a bunch of people were working with the country’s most sensitive information even though the FBI had told the White House it was a very bad idea to let them. And know which ones they were.
But whether through the coincidental timing of a bunch of women refusing to let a serial abuser go on with his life or through orchestration by the Bureau or both, any effort to keep secret that the White House was delaying the obvious counterintelligence choice or even perhaps planning to defy the FBI about it is in the process of being exposed.
Trump is reportedly consulting now with two of the most likely counterintelligence problems, Jared and (on her own right, because of her own dodgy business deals) Ivanka, on a staff shake-up to try to make this problem go away.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/02/09/h ... e-threats/
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 12:03 am
Exclusive: A top Trump campaign adviser close to plea deal with Mueller
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/15/poli ... ssion=true
Rick Gates is reportedly close to becoming Mueller’s third cooperating ex-Trump aide
CNN reports Gates is finalizing a plea deal with Robert Mueller.
By Andrew Prokopandrew@vox.com Feb 15, 2018, 6:54pm EST
Special counsel Robert Mueller may be close to flipping another former Trump staffer.
Rick Gates — Paul Manafort’s longtime junior business partner, and a 2016 Trump campaign staffer — is “finalizing” a plea deal in which he’d cooperate with the Mueller investigation, CNN’s Katelyn Polantz and Sara Murray report. Gates has been in negotiations with Mueller’s team about cooperating for over a month, their report says, citing sources familiar with the case.
Back in October, Mueller’s team indicted Gates and Manafort on a combined 12 counts that mostly focused on alleged money laundering, failure to disclose financial assets, and false statements regarding their work for the government of Ukraine and a Russia-affiliated Ukrainian political party — matters that didn’t have anything specific to do with Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. (Both pleaded not guilty.)
But apparently, Mueller didn’t intend to stop there. The special counsel’s team had prepared superseding indictments that would add to or replace the original charges against both Manafort and Gates, per an earlier CNN report. Facing an expensive legal defense with no end in sight, Gates signed a new lawyer who has been working on cutting him a plea deal.
The biggest question, though, is whether Gates’s possible flip is mainly bad news for Paul Manafort concerning those lobbying and money laundering charges ... or whether it would have even bigger implications for the investigation into Russian interference as a whole, and into President Trump specifically.
Because if Manafort were to know of anything that could implicate Trump in connection with Russia, it seems quite plausible Gates would know it, too.
Who is Rick Gates?
Basically, Gates is Paul Manafort’s protégé and right hand man, who was at his side during his past decade of lobbying and foreign work, before going with him to join the Trump campaign.
Manafort, who is two decades older than Gates, had worked for Republican politicians, controversial dictators, and corporate interests before his career took a turn in the mid-2000s. He “all but vanished from the Washington scene” and began focusing on business activities in Eastern Europe, as Politico later reported.
This began with advising work for the Russian oligarch and aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, and soon moved into the political realm with advising work for the Party of Regions — Ukraine’s pro-Russian political party — and its leader, Viktor Yanukovych.
Gates joined Manafort’s firm in 2006 and began managing much of its Eastern Europe portfolio soon afterward, often working out of Kiev, according to the New York Times. In particular, Gates was to run a new private equity company called Pericles that Manafort was starting, to fund investments in Ukraine and Russia.
But in recent years, these business ventures went awry. President Yanukovych was forced to flee Ukraine due to protests and clashes over his pro-Russian policies. Pericles, meanwhile, collapsed in a messy legal battle, as Deripaska, its leading funder, accused Manafort and Gates of cheating him of millions. (An essential recent profile of Manafort by Franklin Foer in the Atlantic has more details on the pair’s Ukrainian work.)
Then, as part of an effort from Donald Trump to professionalize his presidential campaign, he brought Manafort aboard in March 2016. With Manafort came Gates. And as the original campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, saw his star fall, Manafort’s portfolio gradually expanded until he was effectively running the whole operation. In mid-May, Manafort was officially named campaign chair and chief strategist.
Though Trump fired Manafort in August 2016, Gates stayed on with the campaign through the general election, and later served on Trump’s inaugural committee and worked at a pro-Trump outside group until March 2017.
What was Rick Gates indicted for?
On October 30, 2017, in the first public indictments of Mueller’s investigation, Manafort and Gates were charged with a total of 12 counts.
The gist of the charges was that Manafort and Gates “acted as unregistered agents” of the government of Ukraine and Ukrainian politicians, generating “tens of millions of dollars in income,” which they then “laundered” through “scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts.” You can read the full indictment here.
It’s helpful to think of the charges in two separate but related buckets: One is money laundering, and the second is false statements or failure to disclosure foreign work.
On the money laundering front, Manafort and Gates were both charged with a broader “conspiracy to launder money” and separate specific charges on their failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts.
Then there are the false statements and failure to disclose charges. They are:
Acting as an unregistered agent of the government of Ukraine, its president and one of its major political parties.
Making false and misleading statements under the Foreign Agents Registration Act related to that Ukraine work.
Now, these charges don’t necessarily seem to have anything to do with potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia — Mueller’s main investigative job.
But he likely saw these separate charges against Manafort and Gates as a means to this end. The stronger the evidence he has against either or both of them, the more pressure he can exert to get them to cooperate in the probe into Russian interference.
Would Gates be flipping just on Manafort — or on Trump?
Gates is far younger than Manafort (he’s only 45 years old), and he has young children. So though Gates pleaded not guilty, speculation almost immediately began over whether he might flip to avoid a long prison sentence.
The big question, though, is just what this flipping might entail — and whom Gates might implicate.
It is possible that Gates’s cooperation would primarily be useful to Mueller as a means to pressure Manafort further. After all, Gates certainly has in-depth knowledge about Manafort’s activities over the past decade-plus. His cooperation could make it easier to make a case against Manafort — or to get Manafort himself to flip.
But there are other possibilities as well.
After all, Gates worked on the Trump campaign. And unlike cooperator George Papadopoulos, he actually had a high-level job there which had him work quite closely with the person running the campaign for several months: Manafort.
For instance, there have been recent reports that Mueller is keenly interested in the White House’s story about the June 9, 2016, meeting Donald Trump Jr. arranged with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower for the purpose of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Gates wasn’t at that meeting — but Manafort was. And if anything inappropriate involving Russian interference with the campaign did happen there, one person Manafort just might tell could be his close friend and business partner of over a decade, Rick Gates.
That is to say that, while Gates’s potential cooperation could just be about providing information on Manafort’s business, it’s not out of the question that it’s about providing information on potential collusion with Russia.
It is also worth noting that Mueller has also looked closely into events during the transition period after Trump won but before he was sworn in. And while Gates didn’t officially work on the transition, he worked as the deputy chair of Trump’s inaugural committee, so he was in the president-elect’s orbit at the time.
So if Gates does flip, the bigger picture is that Mueller would then three former Trump aides — that we know of — cooperating and providing him with information. If criminal collusion did happen, that would put the special counsel in a better position than ever to uncover it.
https://www.vox.com/2018/2/15/16955292/ ... -plea-deal
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:29 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:34 pm
Special counsel issues indictment against 13 Russian nationals over 2016 election interference
By Manu Raju, David Shortell and Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN
Updated 1:19 PM ET, Fri February 16, 2018
(CNN)Special counsel Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential election, charging them with conspiracy to defraud the United States, the Department of Justice has announced.
In addition, three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants with aggravated identity theft.
Mueller has been investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election as well as any connections between Russia and Trump campaign associates.
Beginning as early as 2014, the Russian organization Internet Research Agency began operations to interfere with the US political system, including the 2016 elections, according to the indictment, which was released by Mueller's office Friday.
The defendants allegedly posed as US persons, created false US personas, and operated social media pages and groups designed to attract US audiences, the indictment reads.
The Internet Research Agency had a "strategic goal to sow discord in the US political system" including the election, according to the indictment.
Russians posted "derogatory information about a number of candidates," and by mid-2016 they supported Trump and disparaged Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. They bought ads and communicated with "unwitting" people tied to Trump campaign and others to coordinate political activities.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will announce the multiple indictments against Russian nationals and entities Friday afternoon, according to a Justice Department source.
CNN's Laura Jarrett contributed to this report.
by stillrobertpaulsen » Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:37 pm
seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:29 pm wrote:INDICTMENT TIME!!!
by seemslikeadream » Fri Feb 16, 2018 2:40 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 17, 2018 1:44 pm
Trump Transition Records, A Source Of Friction With Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Were Almost Destroyed
President Trump complained when Mueller obtained transition team emails from the General Services Administration. But GSA documents show it would normally “destroy the records and wipe the machines.” News reports prompted GSA officials to inquire about preserving the transition team records.
Posted on February 17, 2018, at 8:00 a.m.
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last December, President Donald Trump accused special counsel Robert Mueller of illegally obtaining thousands of presidential transition emails and other materials from a federal agency. Now, newly released documents show that Mueller almost never got them — the agency would have ordinarily destroyed transition records, a top lawyer there wrote, but “the news cycles” prompted officials to ask if they should preserve them. Eventually, they were copied onto a thumb drive.
Trump and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Ron Johnson and Rep. Trey Gowdy, lashed out at the General Services Administration, which provides administrative support, such as office space, computers, and cell phones, to presidential transition teams, including Trump’s. Gowdy and Johnson demanded that the GSA explain how Mueller’s team obtained the records, which they said were “privileged.”
The issue led to further friction between the Trump administration and Mueller, whose team is probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the possibility that Trump officials colluded with the Kremlin. Following the revelations about the emails obtained through the GSA, Trump supporters called on the president to fire Mueller.
BuzzFeed News has now obtained documents, some heavily redacted, that shed light on how and why the GSA turned over the records to the FBI and Mueller. The documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Seth Greenfield, a lawyer for the GSA, explained in a June 8, 2017, email to his boss that during a conversation with a special counsel staffer and the FBI, he told them that the GSA would normally “destroy the records and wipe the machines, but given the news cycles, GSA decided it was prudent to inquire about preservation during the machine wiping process.”
Greenfield said the GSA reached out to its internal watchdog who contacted the FBI and Department of Justice “and got the ball rolling” to preserve the Trump transition documents, which were copied onto a thumb drive. But Greenfield noted that in order for the GSA to turn over the records to law enforcement, he believed the agency would need a subpoena, because the GSA did not own the records.
A subpoena, Greenfield said, “will remove evidence admissibility issues if there is a prosecution of someone in the future, but I ultimately defer to law enforcement on the issue of a need for a subpoena.”
The FBI determined that a letter, as opposed to a subpoena, would suffice. On June 22, 2017, an FBI agent sent a formal letter to GSA Deputy General Counsel Lennard Loewentritt, and a separate letter was sent to the Defense Information Systems Agency in Fort Meade, which serviced the GSA’s computer equipment, requesting preservation and production of the transition team’s records. The FBI agent’s name was redacted from the letter.
Loewentritt was singled out by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers for illegally turning the transition team’s records over to Mueller.
The FBI letter requested that the GSA preserve a wide range of materials that may be responsive to its ongoing probe into collusion.
The term "Documents and Responsive Materials" includes, but is not limited to, all issued electronic devices, to include computers, cellular telephones, wireless devices, and CMS devices, as well as, both in draft and final form, all emails, voicemails, documents, photos, text messages, instant messages, electronic, handwritten; and/or hardcopy records, databases, telephone records, correspondence, transcripts, audio recordings, analyses, briefings, assessments, banner entries, user agreements, audit records, metadata, storage devices, notes, memoranda, diary and calendar entries, visitor logs, meeting attendance records, meeting room reservations, meeting agendas, badge records, records of entry and exit to any building, room, or secure facility, safe access records, video surveillance of public and non-public areas, and access logs, including of classified information.
The GSA emails turned over to BuzzFeed News indicate that transition team officials were aware the agency might be forced to turn over the transition records.
“I was also told the PTT [Presidential Transition Team] expected a DOJ/FBI/Special Counsel request,” Greenfield wrote in his June 8 email.
He also noted that the requests for the transition team’s records were not just limited to the FBI and special counsel; the House and Senate Intelligence Committees also sought access to the records.
“The requests are from DOJ/FBI, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and the PTT,” he wrote. “GSA thinks the DOJ/FBI, SSCI, White House, and PTT need to discuss how records in GSA's possession will be addressed as GSA is just like a warehouse. Those entities need to discuss review and production.”
Greenfield also noted that a transition team member requested access to “the machines.”
“But I explained GSA will not allow that given the possible impact on evidence,” Greenfield wrote in the email.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/t ... .xuGqEXzmz
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