Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

[OP ED]

(Because having your cabinet chosen by Citibank is so much more progressive)

Nothing of the sort is implied, and that's true even of the post you mock. You have suggested a difference yourself.

Perhaps but the differences as I suggest them are more like different flavors of ice cream, or less, perhaps like different brands of the same flavor of ice cream. Sold on the same shelf in the same store.

I mean this was basically an election where the CIA ran against JSOC.

[Harvey]

Obama Loses His War on Whistleblowers

12 Dec, 2016 by Craig Murray

Obama has waged a vicious War on Whistleblowers, the details of which are insufficiently known to the public. High level security officials, true American patriots like Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou have been handcuffed, dragged through the courts and jailed. William Binney had guns pointed at himself and his wife in their home. Chelsea Manning endures constant persecution and humiliation which meets the bar of cruel and degrading punishment. Edward Snowden pines in exile. These are just the highest profile examples. Hillary Clinton was the driving force behind Obama’s hard line attacks on whistleblowers.

Under Obama, whistleblowers face a total of 751 months behind bars — compared to 24 months for all other whistleblowers combined since the American Revolution. The protection of free speech and truth-telling has been wrenched away under Obama.

I am proud to be a whistleblower myself, and like Drake, Kiriakou, Binney, Manning and Snowden a recipient of the annual Sam Adams award. We have another recipient – Julian Assange – who is a most useful ally indeed.

Whistleblowers seemed a soft target. Indeed seven years into his Presidency Obama seemed to be winning the War on Whistleblowers hands down, leaving them serving time or marginalised and cast out from society.

But Obama/Clinton miscalculated massively. If you set up the super surveillance state, hoovering up all the internet traffic of pretty well everybody, that is not just going to affect the ordinary people whom the elite despise. There is also going to be an awful lot of traffic intercepted from sleazy members of the elite connected to even the most senior politicians, revealing all their corruption and idiosyncracies. From people like John Podesta, to take an entirely random example. And once the super surveillance state has intercepted and stored all that highly incriminating material, you never know if some decent human being, some genuine patriot, from within the security services is going to feel compelled to turn whistleblower.

Then they might turn for help to, to take another entirely random example, Julian Assange.

Obama/Clinton have perished politically as an example of the ultimate in political hubris. Downed by their own surveillance super state. Obama/Clinton’s War on Whistleblowers resulted in the most humiliating of defeats, and now they are political history. This is karma for their persecution of some of the best people in their nation. Good riddance.

All nothing to do with any Russians.

Disclaimer – though I reference fellow holders of the Sam Adams award, this does not indicate a joint effort or that individual award holders or the Sam Adamas Associates necessarily agree with actions taken.

The CIA’s Absence of Conviction

11 Dec, 2016 by Craig Murray

I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”
“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes “Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump.” Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a “credible source”? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

[seemslikeadream]

Republican leaders join outrage at Russia, will investigate hacks
Erin Kelly and Nicole Gaudiano , USA TODAY 5:08 p.m. EST December 12, 2016

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell condemns Russian hacking of U.S. political organizations, as President-elect Donald Trump continues to downplay the CIA’s confidential assessment that Russia hacked into the DNC. (Dec. 12) AP

WASHINGTON — Republican congressional leaders said Monday that key committees will investigate CIA allegations that Russia deployed hackers to disrupt the American presidential election to help President-elect Donald Trump and hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee will conduct bipartisan reviews. A spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Micah Johnson, said that panel also "plans to systematically look at this issue and will begin with both a classified briefing and an open hearing in early January when the Senate returns."

"Obviously, any foreign breach of our cybersecurity measures is disturbing and I strongly condemn any such efforts," McConnell said in a statement that he read to reporters at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol.

He said he agrees with incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Armed Services Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., that possible Russian interference in the U.S. election "cannot be a partisan issue."

Q&A: Why the CIA, FBI differ on Russian election hacking

On the House side, there appeared to be less appetite for any new investigations.

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the House Intelligence Committee will continue to look into cyber threats posed by foreign governments. He did not announce any new investigations and cautioned that recent reports from the CIA should not be used to "cast doubt" on the legitimacy of Trump's "clear and decisive" victory.

"We must condemn and push back forcefully against any state-sponsored cyber attacks on our democratic process," Ryan said in a statement. "Throughout this Congress, Chairman (Devin) Nunes and the Intelligence Committee have been working diligently on the cyber threats posed by foreign governments and terrorist organizations to the security and institutions of the United States. This important work will continue and has my support."

Ryan said "any intervention by Russia is especially problematic because, under President Putin, Russia has been an aggressor that consistently undermines American interests."

Nunes said Monday that he does not see the need for his committee to open a new inquiry into Russian hacking.

"Seeing as cyber attacks, including Russian attacks, have been one of the committee’s top priorities for many years, we’ve held extensive briefings and hearings on the topic," Nunes, R-Calif., said in a statement. "As the FBI, CIA, and other elements of the Intelligence Community continue their investigations into these attacks, the House Intelligence Committee will remain a vigilant monitor of their efforts...At this time I do not see any benefit in opening further investigations, which would duplicate current committee oversight efforts and Intelligence Community inquiries."

However, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, called Monday for a joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence panels.

"The seriousness of the Russian meddling ... during our presidential election merits a bicameral and bipartisan congressional investigation," Schiff said. "This investigation would serve the purpose of informing the public, developing a concerted response, deterring the Russians from further malignant cyber action and inoculating the public against such manipulation in the future."

McConnell said the investigation should remain in existing committees. "Let me remind all of you that the Senate Intelligence Committee — on which I and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee sit as ex officio members — is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter," McConnell said. "And Senator Schumer will soon join us on that committee and he can review this matter through the regular order."

Trump spokesman Jason Miller, speaking to reporters by phone Monday, continued to reject the CIA's analysis of Russian interference in the election.

"Going back to this overall narrative that's in the news right now, I think really clearly what this is is an attempt to try to de-legitimize President-Elect Trump's win," Miller said. "That really seems to be ... what's going on here."

Trump on Sunday dismissed the CIA's conclusion that Russia tried to help his campaign as "ridiculous."

McConnell emphasized that he has faith in the CIA and the entire U.S. intelligence community. "The CIA is filled with selfless patriots, many of whom anonymously risk their lives for the American people," McConnell said.

McConnell’s emphasis on having the Senate Intelligence Committee handle the probe could limit public access to the investigation.

A group of high-ranking Senate Democrats said Monday they hope to complement congressional investigations with an independent, nonpartisan commission to publicly investigate Russian interference with the election and recommend a response. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said Monday that she supports calls for such a panel by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"The American people deserve a nonpartisan, transparent public investigation into this insidious attack on our democratic institutions,” said Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. “As a nation, it’s time to get to the bottom of it and learn what we can do to prevent it from ever happening again."

Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, who will be the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee in the next Congress, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who will be the senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, want a commission to conduct hearings and report their findings to Congress within 18 months. No members of Congress would serve on the panel, which would be appointed by a bipartisan group of congressional leaders.

However, McConnell said he has "every confidence" in the Senate Intelligence Committee to "review this matter in a responsible manner."

"The Obama administration is also now launching a review, and when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence completes its review, there will be additional information released to the public in a responsible manner," he said.

McCain said on CBS This Morning that he can’t yet say whether the Russians intended to help elect Trump. That’s why the Armed Services Committee that he leads will work with the Intelligence Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee to “uncover this whole situation," McCain said.

"There’s no doubt that Russians and others have hacked," McCain said. "Now the question is the intention. But the larger issue that the Armed Services Committee and others are looking into is the whole issue of cyber... That’s the only form of possible conflict where our adversaries have an advantage over us."

Schumer said on Twitter that he welcomes McConnell's support for a "thorough bipartisan investigation." Schumer also said that Congress "must find out how (the hacks) happened and stop future attacks."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/poli ... /95331688/

[Rory]

That's the 3rd time Craig Murray's article has been posted in as many days.

With that, its message clearly isn't getting through to some people if it needs to be said over and over again.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”
“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”

[coffin_dodger]

^^ The above post by Craig Murray is only visible to Fascists, Nazis, Russian-loving traitors or Trumpites. They're all one and the same, anyhow.
If you can see reason in it, you are problematic and obviously stupid.
Do not adjust your sets - normal copypasta from msm outlets will resume shortly.

[seemslikeadream]

as long as we are bringing up stuff that should not be ignored

Playtime is over

By Charlie Stross

So I've had a week now for the outcome of last Tuesday's US election to sink in, and I've been doing some thinking and some research, and my conclusion is that either I'm wearing a tinfoil hat or things are much, much worse than most people imagine.

Nearly four years ago I wrote about the Beige Dictatorship, and predicted:

Overall, the nature of the problem seems to be that our representative democratic institutions have been captured by meta-institutions that implement the iron law of oligarchy by systematically reducing the risk of change. They have done so by converging on a common set of policies that do not serve the public interest, but minimize the risk of the parties losing the corporate funding they require in order to achieve re-election. And in so doing, they have broken the "peaceful succession when enough people get pissed off" mechanism that prevents revolutions. If we're lucky, emergent radical parties will break the gridlock (here in the UK that would be the SNP in Scotland, possibly UKIP in England: in the USA it might be the new party that emerges if the rupture between the Republican realists like Karl Rove and the Tea Party radicals finally goes nuclear), but within a political generation (two election terms) it'll be back to oligarchy as usual.

Well, I was optimistic. The tea party radicals have gone nuclear, but I wasn't counting on a neo-Nazi running the White House, or on the Kremlin stepping in ...

Let me explain.

A few years ago, wandering around the net, I stumbled on a page titled "Why Japan lost the Second World War". (Sorry, I can't find the URL.) It held two photographs. The first was a map of the Pacific Theater used by the Japanese General Staff. It extended from Sakhalin in the north to Australia in the south, from what we now call Bangladesh in the west, to Hawaii in the east. The second photograph was the map of the war in the White House. A Mercator projection showing the entire planet. And the juxtaposition explained in one striking visual exactly why the Japanese military adventure against the United States was doomed from the outset: they weren't even aware of the true size of the battleground.

I'd like you to imagine what it must have been like to be a Japanese staff officer. Because that's where we're standing today. We think we're fighting local battles against Brexit or Trumpism. But in actuality, they're local fronts in a global war. And we're losing because we can barely understand how big the conflict is.

(NB: By "we", I mean folks who think that the Age of Enlightenment, the end of monarchism, and the evolution of Liberalism are good things. If you disagree with this, then kindly hold your breath until your head explodes. (And don't bother commenting below: I'll delete and ban you on sight.))

The logjam created by the Beige Dictatorship was global, throughout the western democracies; and now it has broken. But it didn't break by accident, and the consequences could be very bad indeed.

What happened last week is not just about America. It was one move—a very significant one, bishop-takes-queen maybe—in a long-drawn-out geopolitical chess game. It's being fought around the world: Brexit was one move, the election and massacres of Dutarte in the Philippines were another, the post-coup crackdown in Turkey is a third. The possible election of Marine Le Pen (a no-shit out-of-the-closet fascist) as President of France next year is more of this stuff. The eldritch knot of connections between Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Da'esh in the wreckage of Syria is icing on top. It's happening all over and I no longer think this is a coincidence.

Part of it is about the geopolitics of climate change (and mass migration and water wars). Part of it is about the jarring transition from an oil-based economy (opposed by the factions who sell oil and sponsor denial climate change, from Exxon-Mobil to the Kremlin) to a carbon-neutral one.

Part of it is the hellbrew of racism and resentment stirred up by loss of relative advantage, by the stagnation of wages in the west and the perception that other people somewhere else are stealing all the money—Chinese factories, Wall Street bankers, the faceless Other. (17M people in the UK have less than £100 in savings; by a weird coincidence, the number of people who voted for Brexit was around 17M. People who are impoverished become desperate and angry and have little investment in the status quo—a fancy way of saying they've got nothing to lose.)

But another big part of the picture I'm trying to draw is Russia's long-drawn out revenge for the wild ride of misrule the neoconservatives inflicted on the former USSR in the 1990s.

Stripped of communism, the old guard didn't take their asset-stripping by neoliberals during the Clinton years lying down; they no more morphed into whitebread Americans than the Iraqis did during the occupation. They developed a reactionary playbook; a fellow called Alexander Dugin wrote The Foundations of Geopolitics, and it's been a set text in the Russian staff college for the past two decades. A text that proposes a broad geopolitical program for slavic (Russian) dominance over Asia, which is to be won by waging a global ideological war against people like us. "In principle, Eurasia and our space, the heartland Russia, remain the staging area of a new anti-bourgeois, anti-American revolution. ... The new Eurasian empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us. This common civilizational impulse will be the basis of a political and strategic union."

I don't want to sound like a warmed-over cold warrior or a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist. However, the authoritarian faction currently ascendent in Putin's Russia seem to be running their country by this book. Their leaders remember how the KGB (newly reformed last month) handled black propaganda and disinformation, and they have people who know how new media work and who are updating the old time Moscow rules for a new century. Trump's Russian connections aren't an accident—they may be the most important thing about him, and Russia's sponsorship of extreme right neo-fascist movements throughout Europe is an alarming part of the picture. China isn't helping, either: they're backing authoritarian regimes wherever they seem useful, for the same reason the US State Department under Henry Kissinger backed fascists throughout central and south America in the 1970s—it took a generation to fix the damage from Operation Condor, and that was local (at least, confined to a single continent).

Trying to defeat this kind of attack through grass-roots action at local level ... well, it's not useless, it's brave and it's good, but it's also Quixotic. With hindsight, the period from December 26th, 1991 to September 11th, 2001, wasn't the end of history; it was the Weimar Republic repeating itself, and now we're in the dirty thirties. It's going to take more than local action if we're to climb out of the mass grave the fascists have been digging for us these past decades. It's going to take international solidarity and a coherent global movement and policies and structures I can barely envisage if we're going to rebuild the framework of shared progressive values that have been so fatally undermined.

We haven't lost yet.

But if we focus too narrowly on the local context, we will lose, because there is a de facto global fascist international at work, they've got a game plan, they're quite capable of applying the methods of Operation Condor on a global scale, and if we don't work out how to push back globally fast there will be nobody to remember our graves.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-st ... -over.html

About the Foundations of Geopolitics by Alexander Dugin (via wikipedia, my bold):

Germany should be offered the de facto political dominance over most Protestant and Catholic states located within Central and Eastern Europe. Kaliningrad oblast could be given back to Germany. The book uses the term a "Moscow-Berlin axis".[1]
France should be encouraged to form a "Franco-German bloc" with Germany. Both countries have a "firm anti-Atlanticist tradition".[1]
United Kingdom should be cut off from Europe.[1]
Finland should be absorbed into Russia. Southern Finland will be combined with the Republic of Karelia and northern Finland will be "donated to Murmansk Oblast".[1]
Estonia should be given to Germany's sphere of influence.[1]
Latvia and Lithuania should be given a "special status" in the Eurasian-Russian sphere.[1]
Poland should be granted a "special status" in the Eurasian sphere.[1]
Romania, Macedonia, "Serbian Bosnia" and Greece – "orthodox collectivist East" – will unite with the "Moscow the Third Rome" and reject the "rational-individualistic West".[1]
Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "“Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning, no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness, its certain territorial ambitions represents an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is cordon sanitaire, which would be inadmissible.[1]

In the Middle East and Central Asia:

The book stresses the "continental Russian-Islamic alliance" which lies "at the foundation of anti-Atlanticist strategy". The alliance is based on the "traditional character of Russian and Islamic civilization".
Iran is a key ally. The book uses the term "Moscow-Tehran axis".[1]
Armenia has a special role and will serve as a "strategic base" and it is necessary to create "the [subsidiary] axis Moscow-Erevan-Teheran". Armenians "are an Aryan people … [like] the Iranians and the Kurds".[1]
Azerbaijan could be "split up" or given to Iran.[1]
Georgia should be dismembered. Abkhazia and "United Ossetia" (which includes Georgia's South Ossetia) will be incorporated into Russia. Georgia's independent policies are unacceptable.[1]
Russia needs to create "geopolitical shocks" within Turkey. These can be achieved by employing Kurds, Armenians and other minorities.[1]
The book regards the Caucasus as a Russian territory, including "the eastern and northern shores of the Caspian (the territories of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan)" and Central Asia (mentioning Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghistan and Tajikistan).[1]

In Asia:

China, which represents a danger to Russia, "must, to the maximum degree possible, be dismantled". Dugin suggests that Russia start by taking Tibet-Xinjiang-Mongolia-Manchuria as a security belt.[2] Russia should offer China help "in a southern direction – Indochina (except Vietnam), the Philippines, Indonesia, Australia" as geopolitical compensatation.[1]
Russia should manipulate Japanese politics by offering the Kuril Islands to Japan and provoking anti-Americanism.[1]
Mongolia should be absorbed into Eurasia-Russia.[1]

The book emphasizes that Russia must spread Anti-Americanism everywhere: "the main 'scapegoat' will be precisely the U.S."

In the United States:

Russia should use its special forces within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism. For instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."[1]

The Eurasian Project could be expanded to South and Central America.[1]

A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump

Has the bureau investigated this material?
David Corn Oct. 31, 2016 6:52 PM

On Friday, FBI Director James Comey set off a political blast when he informed congressional leaders that the bureau had stumbled across emails that might be pertinent to its completed inquiry into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails when she was secretary of state. The Clinton campaign and others criticized Comey for intervening in a presidential campaign by breaking with Justice Department tradition and revealing information about an investigation—information that was vague and perhaps ultimately irrelevant—so close to Election Day. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information."

Reid's missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written to Comey and demanded an investigation of the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign," and in that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page, an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited Moscow. Last month, Yahoo News reported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. (Page has called accusations against him "garbage.") On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chief. But Reid's recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.

Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not? An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently serious" to share with the FBI.

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."

The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was "shock and horror." The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. "It's quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on," he says.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer comments. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding the memos. In the past, Trump has declared, "I have nothing to do with Russia."

The FBI is certainly investigating the hacks attributed to Russia that have hit American political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. But there have been few public signs of whether that probe extends to examining possible contacts between the Russian government and Trump. (In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous online reports that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, "We don't yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation." In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, "The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.")

According to several national security experts, there is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. In August, Democratic members of the House committee on oversight wrote Comey to ask the FBI to investigate "whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these [cyber] attacks in order to interfere with the US. presidential election." In September, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrats on, respectively, the Senate and House intelligence committees, issued a joint statement accusing Russia of underhanded meddling: "Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election." The Obama White House has declared Russia the culprit in the hacking capers, expressed outrage, and promised a "proportional" response.

There's no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any of the allegations contained in the former spy's memos. But a Russian intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking.

In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on Trump's possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman, Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, "He is confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... nald-trump[/quote]

Ukraine Prepares for Trump
Letter From Kiev
By Isaac Webb
Two days after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States, Artem Sytnik, the head of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, announced that his office would end its investigation of Paul Manafort, a former chairman of Trump’s campaign who is still in contact with the president-elect’s team. Ukrainian officials previously alleged that Manafort had been designated to receive undisclosed cash payments totaling $12.7 million from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, a pro-Russian group that came to epitomize the corruption that contributed to Yanukovych’s ouster during the 2014 Euromaidan Revolution. Sytnik said his bureau had abandoned the case because it had “enough of its own officials” to prosecute. But the subtext of his remarks was clear: continuing to investigate Manafort might have threatened Ukraine’s standing with the next U.S. administration.

Kiev hopes to establish a relationship with the incoming Trump administration that will ensure that Ukraine continues to receive the support it has enjoyed during the presidency of Barack Obama. Ukrainian officials have been outwardly hopeful that the Republican Party’s historical backing for their country will persist under Trump. But they are also concerned about how Ukraine will fit into the president-elect’s nascent foreign policy. If Ukraine is to develop close ties with the Trump administration, it will have to look past Trump’s praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his misunderstandings about Russian activity on Ukrainian soil. And it will take a significant diplomatic and political effort to mobilize U.S. support, particularly from Republicans who have aligned with Trump’s neo-isolationist platform. With U.S. sanctions on Russia up for annual review in March, Kiev has little time to try to persuade Trump to modify the foreign-policy agenda he articulated during his campaign and to ensure that his declarations of admiration for Putin do not turn into a policy of appeasement.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles ... ares-trump

[MacCruiskeen]

You are spamming this board, SLAD. Yet again.

[Morty]

Obama Loses His War on Whistleblowers

12 Dec, 2016 by Craig Murray

Obama has waged a vicious War on Whistleblowers, the details of which are insufficiently known to the public. High level security officials, true American patriots like Thomas Drake and John Kiriakou have been handcuffed, dragged through the courts and jailed. William Binney had guns pointed at himself and his wife in their home. Chelsea Manning endures constant persecution and humiliation which meets the bar of cruel and degrading punishment. Edward Snowden pines in exile. These are just the highest profile examples. Hillary Clinton was the driving force behind Obama’s hard line attacks on whistleblowers.

Under Obama, whistleblowers face a total of 751 months behind bars — compared to 24 months for all other whistleblowers combined since the American Revolution. The protection of free speech and truth-telling has been wrenched away under Obama.

I am proud to be a whistleblower myself, and like Drake, Kiriakou, Binney, Manning and Snowden a recipient of the annual Sam Adams award. We have another recipient – Julian Assange – who is a most useful ally indeed.

Whistleblowers seemed a soft target. Indeed seven years into his Presidency Obama seemed to be winning the War on Whistleblowers hands down, leaving them serving time or marginalised and cast out from society.

But Obama/Clinton miscalculated massively. If you set up the super surveillance state, hoovering up all the internet traffic of pretty well everybody, that is not just going to affect the ordinary people whom the elite despise. There is also going to be an awful lot of traffic intercepted from sleazy members of the elite connected to even the most senior politicians, revealing all their corruption and idiosyncracies. From people like John Podesta, to take an entirely random example. And once the super surveillance state has intercepted and stored all that highly incriminating material, you never know if some decent human being, some genuine patriot, from within the security services is going to feel compelled to turn whistleblower.

Then they might turn for help to, to take another entirely random example, Julian Assange.

Obama/Clinton have perished politically as an example of the ultimate in political hubris. Downed by their own surveillance super state. Obama/Clinton’s War on Whistleblowers resulted in the most humiliating of defeats, and now they are political history. This is karma for their persecution of some of the best people in their nation. Good riddance.

All nothing to do with any Russians.

Disclaimer – though I reference fellow holders of the Sam Adams award, this does not indicate a joint effort or that individual award holders or the Sam Adamas Associates necessarily agree with actions taken.

Maybe we need a new thread to unpack and discuss all the hints Craig Murray has been dropping lately, and so avoid derailing the important discussion about Russian hacking here on this thread?

[seemslikeadream]

go for it and maybe you can see what pissing on your thread feels like for a change

[PufPuf93]

What we are observing is that the CIA and all 17 USA intelligence agencies are now on record as preferring that Hillary Clinton be POTUS rather than Donald Trump.

Probably the cause of this stance is that Clinton is far more representative of the status quo and budget and influence of the agencies and Trump is a loose cannon that likely puts the nation at greater risk. The intelligence agencies certainly believe that Trump is the greater risk to their interests and continuity.

The Russians no doubt have folks that dabble about and hack USA computer systems for intelligence or general mischief but as far as a direct causal push to elect Trump I doubt. I can greatly dislike Trump and think the man inappropriate and unwise for the position of POTUS but can hold more than one thought in my mind at once, specifically separate social grooming by our own government and media.

Looks like a frenzy over nothing not some grift to favor the GOP. The GOP is far from monolithic about owning up to Trump. The fringe right wing and pirates are who benefit from Trump.

[Elvis]

Maybe we need a new thread to unpack and discuss all the hints Craig Murray has been dropping lately

May I suggest http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40233 "Who Was Seth Rich?"

I'm supposed to be working right now, so I'll add to that thread later; Craig Murray is essential to it.

[Morty]

Maybe we need a new thread to unpack and discuss all the hints Craig Murray has been dropping lately

May I suggest http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40233 "Who Was Seth Rich?"

I'm supposed to be working right now, so I'll add to that thread later; Craig Murray is essential to it.

As good a place as any (though I was joking about starting a new thread, and it would be irresponsible to leave this thread unmolested - or un-pissed-on, as slad puts it), though at the outset, it looks as if Murray might not be pointing towards Rich as the leaker. Must go and do a few things myself for the moment.

[seemslikeadream]

As good a place as any (though I was joking about starting a new thread, and it would be irresponsible to leave this thread unmolested - or un-pissed-on, as slad puts it), though at the outset, it looks as if Murray might not be pointing towards Rich as the leaker. Must go and do a few things myself for the moment.

here's some pissing for you...I'd love for you to start your own thread...love to see you handle it...bring it on..people do this to me...well since it is a perfectly fine thing to do acceptable behavior here....I can't wait to pass on the pleasure to you and your good buddys and your lovely thread

but of course you have too much fun derailing my thread so I am sure you won't start your own thread...

^^ The above post by Craig Murray is only visible to Fascists, Nazis, Russian-loving traitors or Trumpites. They're all one and the same, anyhow.
If you can see reason in it, you are problematic and obviously stupid.
Do not adjust your sets - normal copypasta from msm outlets will resume shortly.

Iam:

...is a fucking idiot.

It's hardwired into you, isn't it?

I missed the cross-thread stalking and cries of 'stoopid', 'you're a fucking idiot' and 'needs to be taken down a peg or two', so I came back for more punishment.

Iam:

Nah, I like you

? You just called me a fucking idiot, not five minutes ago.
Are you alright, mate? Is there booze involved?

slad, maybe it seemslikeit'sallaboutyou, but it isn't. Mostly, but not all.

OMG really? WHY WOULD YOU BELIEVE ANYTHING FROM POLITICO?

They have been spouting 100% nonstop Hillary propaganda since Day One.

They cannot be trusted.

The CIA's job is to lie to large groups of people.

Are you REALLY posting that kind of shit at RI?

I can go to DailyKos for that kind of stupid shit.

Really.

Nordic, get with the programme, dude.
MSM are now perfectly acceptable as sources at RI - as long as they are anti-Trump. Nothing else matters. Oh, and the Russians are behind it. All of it.
Fall in line pronto or you'll be judged mentally ill and sentenced to prolonged exposure to tantrums.

Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves
Postby Nordic » Sat Dec 10, 2016 12:09 am
Putin meddling in the elections here?

Total crock of shit.

And sure he preferred Trump over Hillary. HILLARY WANTED A WAR WITH RUSSIA.

So not wanting to have a war with the US makes him bad??

Da fuck?!

Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves
Postby Nordic » Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:47 pm
OMG really? WHY WOULD YOU BELIEVE ANYTHING FROM POLITICO?

They have been spouting 100% nonstop Hillary propaganda since Day One.

They cannot be trusted.

The CIA's job is to lie to large groups of people.

Are you REALLY posting that kind of shit at RI?

I can go to DailyKos for that kind of stupid shit.

Really.

Re: NSA Chief Russia Hacked '16 Election Congress Must Inves
Postby Nordic » Sat Dec 10, 2016 3:16 pm
What bullshit. What has happened to RI?

Listen, I admire and respect Putin more than anyone in the US government right now.

Except maybe for Tulsi Gabbard.

Seriously, you guys are "this close" to posting photos of monster trucks covered in American flags and memes like "kick their ass, take their gas".

I've got some WMD's in Iraq I'd like to sell you. I take PayPal.

Re: What's Happening? It? (TRIGGERS UPON TRIGGERS)
Postby Nordic » Mon Dec 05, 2016 2:21 pm
Heaven Swan wrote:

The women that voted for Trump were acting from internalized misogyny (among other things) that even they don't understand.


But you do. Because you're a superior creature and they are cretins.

This claim is like telling me I'm racist because I disapprove of Obama. It only shows your own monomania.

Re: What's Happening? It? (TRIGGERS UPON TRIGGERS)
Postby Nordic » Sun Dec 04, 2016 5:56 pm
It's "alt-right" because it's focused on fascist Hillary's corporate MIC campaign runner?

This kind of labeling just pisses me off. Yeah yeah I know...

Brietbart, the actual guy Brietbart, tweeted this not long before he died in 2011:

https://mobile.twitter.com/AndrewBreitb ... 8100561920


and I think he really really loves Bannon

AndrewBreitbart – Verified account ‏@AndrewBreitbart

How prog-guru John Podesta isn't household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upperer defending unspeakable dregs escapes me.

Also this:



@MMFA is Media Matters

Nordic, get with the programme, dude.
MSM are now perfectly acceptable as sources at RI - as long as they are anti-Trump. Nothing else matters. Oh, and the Russians are behind it. All of it.
Fall in line pronto or you'll be judged mentally ill and sentenced to prolonged exposure to tantrums.

Another intelligent post, CD. In your world I suppose conjecture suffices for proof, eh?

I asked Nordic his to expound upon his take.

And you degrade everyone here with stupid remarks like that you just spewed forth.

That's all you've got, isn't it? To question my intellect.

Don't agree? - you're stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! You don't understand because you're stupid! All those people that disagree with me are stupid, uneducated morons.

I bow to your intellectual, moral and authoritarian superiority, Iam.
Don't like my posts? - ignore them.

SLAD, for page after page after page after page you post torrents of copied-and-pasted entirely-unsubstantiated warmongering crap from the likes of Corn and Freedland and HuffPo and WaPo and the WSJ and the Daily Beast and "Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project"; you pepper it all with cretinous LOLs and ROTFL-smileys; and finally you accuse me of loving Socha (sic) Faal...

... and then when I react to all that with the merest trace of irritation you whinge about being insulted?

Answer: Yes. You do.

I hate to break this to you, SLAD, but you are not in fact The Queen. It`s just a dream.


Not Her Majesty, just dreaming.

Putin meddling in the elections here?

Total crock of shit.

And sure he preferred Trump over Hillary. HILLARY WANTED A WAR WITH RUSSIA.

So not wanting to have a war with the US makes him bad??

Da fuck?!

Jesus christ. Ill get carpal tunnel rsi if i keep having to scroll past this mountain of dogshit copy pasta propaganda.

At least the iraq war lies were kind of entertaining. This heap of contrived manure is distracting people from the very real military take over of the levers of civilian government.

What bullshit. What has happened to RI?

Listen, I admire and respect Putin more than anyone in the US government right now.

Except maybe for Tulsi Gabbard.

Seriously, you guys are "this close" to posting photos of monster trucks covered in American flags and memes like "kick their ass, take their gas".

I've got some WMD's in Iraq I'd like to sell you. I take PayPal.

I am begging you to stop personally attacking me ....it's perfectly fine to disagree with what I post but please stop the personal attacks and accusing me for things I have not done

Enough, slad. You are imagining things. I have just gone out of my to defend you. I am not personally attacking you. So stop talking rubbish. Ever since this insane "election process" started you have chosen to regard every disagreement, every rebuttal and every refutal as a personal attack.

Enough, really.

Americans need to get over themselves. Whiney teenagers might have some excuse for their whining. But I have really had an absolute bellyful of it from adults (this evening too, yes, goddammit). And yes, this European city too is full of insufferable privileged middle-aged moneyed White American property-owning know-nothings talking absolute bullshit and whining about their pain and begging for pity.

Get real. Join the planet, ffs.

I take the accusation that I would ever link to FoxNews or Breitbart and the like as a personal insult

Learn to read, ffs.

Enough.

KKK influence .....Bannon (but I repeat myself) influence .....FBI influence ......Investigate them all!

So can we move on from treating russia like some kind of special case, worthy of pages of copypasta?

KKK influence .....Bannon (but I repeat myself) influence .....FBI influence ......Investigate them all!

So can we move on from treating russia like some kind of special case, worthy of pages of copypasta?

I have an idea....why don't you just post something of interest instead of whining all the time

seemslikeamericandream

I am posting this for news value...

The news value is zero, slad (in figures: 0) David Corn is a notorious spook creep. Lindsay fucking Graham is Lindsay fucking Graham.

...it is happening and I am posting it...

Fox News is also happening. So is The Sun (UK). So is Breitbart and The Daily Beast and The Daily Stormer. So post all of that too, for "news value". Don't leave anything out. Ignore all rebuttals and refutals. Because that's what The New RI is all about, isn't it? Anything goes.

Post all shite here, however stupid and unsubstantiated, however dodgy the source. It's all grist to the somebody's mill.

NSA Chief Russia Hacked 14-Legged Killer Squid Congress Must Investiga:



Congress must investiga, dammit. [/quote]



edit to add another one

oops got to edit again he put in more crap

[MacCruiskeen]

NSA Chief Russia Hacked 14-Legged Killer Squid Congress Must Investiga:



Congress must investiga, dammit.

[seemslikeadream]

Dispute over Russia reflects growing Republican resistance to Trump
McConnell: 'The Russians are not our friends' Play Video3:24
At a news conference, Dec. 12, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) slammed Republican lawmakers who "are reluctant to either review Russian tactics or ignore them." "The Russians are not our friends," McConnell told reporters. (The Washington Post)
By Karoun Demirjian, Paul Kane and Ed O'Keefe December 12 at 6:18 PM
Republican lawmakers are increasingly at odds with Donald Trump across a range of ­high-profile domestic and national security issues, an early sign that the GOP-led Congress might resist some elements of the ­president-elect’s un­or­tho­dox agenda.

Although Trump maintains enthusiastic backing in many corners of the party, key members of the Senate and House have been outspoken in challenging his views of Russia and its interference in the U.S. election, warning of potential conflicts of interest arising from Trump’s far-flung business interests if he does not fully divest from his company, and criticizing the tough approach that he has taken to some companies, including his threat to impose a stiff tariff on firms that move jobs overseas.

There is also friction over Trump’s consideration of ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state — with GOP advisers warning that a growing number of Republican senators may be unwilling to vote to confirm Tillerson because of his ties to Russia.

Trump tweeted Monday evening that he would announce his choice for secretary of state on Tuesday morning.

No issue has so clearly divided Trump and top Republicans lawmakers as much as his dismissal of U.S. intelligence agencies that attributed the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other political targets to Russian operatives. The tensions were exposed over the weekend, as Trump belittled the CIA following a Washington Post report that the agency believed that Moscow favored Trump in the election while several Republicans, including Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), joined with Democrats to call for an investigation into the matter.

Seven reactions to CIA assessment of Russia’s role in presidential election Play Video2:46
President-elect Donald Trump as well as Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Dec. 11 reacted to the CIA’s assessment that Russia intervened to help Trump win the election. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)
“The Russians are not our friends,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Monday, voicing his support for an inquiry.

McConnell stopped short of endorsing a special select committee investigation, as some lawmakers have suggested, but said that the Senate Intelligence Committee is equipped to take on the matter.

“This simply cannot be a partisan issue,” he said.

McConnell also appeared to break with Trump in his assessment of the CIA, saying that he has “the highest confidence” in the intelligence community and that the CIA is “filled with selfless patriots, many of whom anonymously risk their lives for the American people.”

McConnell, meanwhile, declined to defend Tillerson against accusations that he is too close with Russia, telling reporters that he would not comment on a hypothetical “phantom nominee.”

McConnell’s reluctance to engage on Tillerson came after some of his allies on national security issues, including Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), raised doubts about the ExxonMobil chief’s background.

Tillerson received the Order of Friendship from Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013, two years after ExxonMobil won a contract to explore for oil in a Russian-controlled area of the Arctic Ocean. The agreement has been frozen since the United States imposed sanctions on Moscow after Russia’s 2014 incursion into Ukraine.

Some senior GOP advisers fear that the Tillerson-Putin relationship will make Republicans reluctant to support the nomination. One adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said as many as seven might now be unwilling to vote to confirm him as the nation’s top diplomat.

McCain said he would give Tillerson a fair hearing if the oil executive is nominated, but on Monday the senator questioned his judgment for being close to the Russian president. Putin “is a thug and a murderer,” McCain said on CNN, “and I don’t see how anybody could be a friend of this old-time KGB agent.”

D.J. Jordan, a spokesman for Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), said Monday that the lawmaker “has a lot of questions about Mr. Tillerson and his ties to Russia,” though he added that Lankford is “hopeful that those questions will be addressed in the days ahead.”

A big test for Republicans
Taken together, the tensions between the president-elect and fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill reflect a major test for how the GOP congressional majorities will handle the unusual circumstances of the Trump era. Republicans, many of whom opposed Trump during the presidential primaries, want to work with him in many areas and avoid alienating his enthusiastic voter base. Yet some in the GOP are also assessing how to fulfill their constitutional duties as a check on a businessman-president who is unaccustomed to the public scrutiny inherent to a democratic system and unconcerned with past traditions of transparency, particularly when it comes to his personal finances. They also must prepare for the potential that Trump, who has effectively harnessed Twitter to skewer his critics, could turn his ire toward them.

Democrats, for their part, have little power to investigate Trump or thwart his nominations. In 2013, Democrats — angered by what they described as years of Republican obstruction — voted to scrap the rule requiring at least 60 senators to overcome a procedural hurdle and move to a final confirmation vote. Now, all of Trump’s nominees for the executive and judicial branches, with the exception of picks for the Supreme Court, can be confirmed on a simple majority vote.

With 48 seats in the Senate, Democrats in that chamber need to win over only a handful of Republicans to block a nominee, though doing so requires a degree of Democratic unity. That could be difficult, with 10 of the party’s senators facing reelection in two years in states that Trump won.

Incoming Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and his leadership team have urged senators set to serve as ranking Democrats on top national security, financial and ­domestic-policy committees to focus on hiring professional investigators able to quickly dive into the personal and financial backgrounds of Trump’s nominees, according to a senior Democratic aide. The hope is that Democrats will be able to dig up dirt on Trump’s nominees just as Republicans did to some of President Obama’s high-profile nominees in the early days of his administration.

The larger drama is likely to take place among congressional Republicans, who will face pressure to help Trump. So far, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) has demonstrated a reluctance to challenge the ­president-elect on some of the issues that have animated his GOP colleagues.

On Monday, Ryan dismissed calls for a probe into Russian meddling in the election, saying the House Intelligence Committee is “working diligently on the cyber threats posed by foreign governments and terrorist organizations.” He also appeared to criticize suggestions that Russia favored Trump, saying in a statement that “exploiting the work of our intelligence community for partisan purposes does a grave disservice to those professionals and potentially jeopardizes national security,” and “we should not cast doubt on the clear and decisive outcome of this election.”

Ryan also has waved off concerns about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest related to his global real estate and branding empire. Asked last week by a CNBC interviewer how he hoped the president-elect would handle his business after he takes office, Ryan said, “However he wants to.”

“This is not what I’m concerned about in Congress,” he said.

Trump had planned a news conference Thursday to reveal how he will handle the business while he is in office, but his transition team said Monday that he will do it next month. Trump has hinted that he will retain an ownership stake while putting his adult children in charge of the company’s operations, telling “Fox News Sunday” that “essentially I’m not going to have anything to do with the management.”

Ethics experts and lawmakers in both parties have warned that if Trump retains his stake, he will face congressional hearings and, potentially, investigations into whether he has a direct and personal financial stake in the decisions he is supposed to be making in the public interest. They say that Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns has left the public largely in the dark about the full extent of the potential conflicts.

“Turning it over to his family and him still being a recipient of fruits of their labor does create conflicts in my mind,” said Graham, the GOP senator from South Carolina. “It will cloud his presidency if he doesn’t find a solution that puts it behind him.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a member of the House Oversight Committee and the new chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus, told The Post last week that he expects Trump to divorce himself from the business “as much as you can have a blind trust and fully divest.”

“He has more counselors around him, with plenty of law degrees, that will give him great counsel on how to stay out of trouble,” Meadows said. He added that he expected Trump to build the proper firewall, but that “we have an oversight function that would be appropriate, and from my standpoint I think it’s incumbent upon the Oversight Committee to look at everything without a partisan lens.”

‘Vigorous oversight’
The chairman of the oversight panel, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), said it was premature to consider any sort of investigation, but he said the committee would provide “vigorous oversight” of the new president.

“He’s still a private citizen at this point, though he needs to get his affairs in order,” Chaffetz said. “Give him a little breathing space, I think that’s fair.”

Ethics experts have called for Trump to appoint an independent trustee, unconnected to his family, to lead an effort to sell his assets and reinvest the proceeds without his knowledge. Trump has appeared to brush off concerns about conflicts, noting that there is no legal requirement that he separate.

“When I ran, everybody knew that I was a very big owner of real estate all over the world,” Trump told Fox News’s Chris Wallace in an interview that aired Sunday. “I mean, I’m not going to have anything to do with the management of the company. You know, when you sell real estate that’s not like going out and selling a stock. That takes a long time. . . . I’m going to have nothing to with it. And I’ll be honest with you — I don’t care about it anymore.”

Trump said he was “turning down billions of dollars of deals” as he prepares to take office. “I’m not going to be doing deals at all,” he said. “Now that would be — I don’t even know if that’s a conflict. I mean, I have the right to do it. You know, under the law, I have the right to do it. I just don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do deals, because I want to focus on this.”

Several lawmakers who would be responsible for probing potential conflicts of interest said in recent interviews they are willing to give the incoming president time and space to figure out how he will deal with the situation.

“We haven’t even started the next Congress and we haven’t seen exactly how President-elect Trump is going to handle all this,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who leads the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee with jurisdiction over investigations. “I’m going to give him and his administration time to figure out what, quite honestly, is a very difficult situation.”

In other corners of the GOP, lawmakers say the calls to investigate Trump are coming primarily from his political opponents.

“There are going to be detractors from Trump [who] are going to try to make it sound like all the conflict of interest and all of that, and I don’t think people are really concerned about that except just the activists you run into on the Hill,” said Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.).

“If it’s going to be those who just hate Trump and are looking for something to do him in or lessen his effectiveness — that’s not going to happen,” he added.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... 0a3546b325