Trumpublicons: Foreign Influence/Grifting in '16 US Election

[Belligerent Savant]

.
I did not/have not questioned your intellectual ability.

Yes, we have different tactics, to be sure, but your quote above was in response to your tendency to -- sometimes -- misrepresent the intentions of others, or presume others may have some sort of... vendetta, for lack of a better word, rather than disagreement over a given topic. There are exceptions to this, of course -- I can only speak for myself, here.

(Using copy/pasted material as the sole means to respond to another's inquiry is also not my ideal form of communication/debate, but again, we each have our styles, and those styles may in turn evoke certain responses).

Let's aim to get back to topic. Besides, I'm already late for a meeting..

[seemslikeadream]

I let you have your style ...I do not go into your threads and attack/school your methods...your style... I leave you to what you do I would like you to do the same for me ....I have been doing things this way for 15 years please understand at this point I am not going to change I don't mind you posting in my threads with facts let's just keep it to that instead of personal style

for me this thread as it is with most of my threads.....is a history just like the Fukushima or Inside the World of Cambridge Analytica or The War on Women or the Aurora CO Theater Massacre or the Torture Report or the Investigating Saudi Government 9/11 Connection threads ...I threat them no differently

if it wasn't for my postings of Kaspersky Lab AND Sergei Mikhailov NO ONE would even be reading about it here
no one else even bothered to bring up the topic and you wouldn't even have had the chance to way in and I accept your thanks for bringing it up


wikileaks says it was common knowledge about the emails ...NOT when Stone talked to trump on the phone and Cohen overheard the conversation

AND THERE ARE PHONE RECORDS



Cohen said at the hearing he was afraid that if trump looses in 2020 that the transfer of power will not happen

I do not think people really understand how dangerous this criminal is


I can guarantee that somewhere there is co operation about that phone call between trump and Stone and Assange and we will see it eventually

Laura Rozen

Get Me Roger Stone doc director @morganpehme tells me he his co-director believes Stone met w Farage in Cleveland July 19 or 20.

The crew had been filming Stone for their doc, but Farage refused to let them film his dinner w Stone and Alex Jones, Pehme has said

Cohen said today he was in Trump’s office when Trump put Stone on speaker phone about coming massive WL email dump that wd hurt HRC

Cohen said he believed that Stone/Trump call he overheard was July 18 or July 19.



asked Pehme what date was the dinner, he said: I don't think we know for certain. My co-director Dan believes it was either day 2 or 3


“of the Convention which would have been either July 19 or 20.”


Farage reportedly arrived at RNC July 19, 2016. https://qz.com/736087/brexit-mastermind ... onvention/ …
Spoke at McClatchy breakfast July 20


(reposted above tweet with fixed links)
https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1100848438026096642

Trump’s bombastic remarks make Brexit leader ‘wince a little bit’

Nigel Farage, the architect of the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote, is touring the Republican National Convention this week but insists that he doesn’t want to meddle in American presidential politics.

That said, the former United Kingdom Independent Party leader, declared that he wouldn’t cast a vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton “if you paid me.”

“My analysis of Hillary Clinton is that there is this sense of entitlement, as if this country now has its own hereditary principle…,” he said. “That sense of entitlement puts me off.”

Farage discussed Brexit, Obama, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a McClatchy-sponsored breakfast Wednesday at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

He said he’s a Trump fan and is looking forward to hearing the celebrity real estate mogul speak in person. He likes most of what he’s heard from afar, but admits that some of Trump’s more controversial statements have given him pause.

“I can see what he’s trying to do – he’s trying to get some big messages out there, some big wedge issues, he’s trying to reach voters who are frustrated and perhaps a little bit scared,” Farage said. “I get what he’s doing, but occasionally the style of it makes me wince a little bit.”

He added: “I’ve been called ‘over the top’ once or twice, but I think some of Donald Trump’s comments are pretty out there…. To say you would ban all Muslims from coming to America….”

Farage, who was invited to attend the GOP convention, echoed the sentiment of Trump and many other Republicans in his disdain for Obama.

He resented Obama for inserting himself into the Brexit debate, urging U.K. citizens to vote to “remain” in the European Union rather than “leave” it.

“Obama came to the United Kingdom…actually I should always be grateful, eternally grateful to Obama because he came to our country, he was rude to us, he told us what we should do and he led to a big Brexit bounce of several points. So thank you, Obama, for helping us win this referendum.”

Not wanting to follow Obama’s example on Brexit, Farage said American voters shouldn’t expect to see him on the campaign trail with Trump or any Republican or conservative candidates.

“I shouldn’t do that,” he said. “I don’t think interfering in somebody else’s politics, directly, is the right thing to do.”
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politi ... 74417.html

There's no better way to control reality than controlling the information that delineates reality.

- Caroline Orr



Trump says he believes Kim Jong Un was not responsible for what happened to Otto Warmbier.

"Those prisons are rough...He tells me that he didn’t know about it and I will take him at his word.”

Echoes of Trump previously taking Vladimir Putin at his word.

do people realize that a Russian was in Vietnam schooling trump on how to behave?

Did Cohen Give a Peek at the Mueller Report?

Feb. 28, 2019
The special counsel is still hiding events that lie at the core of his investigation — events that involve the president directly.

By Marcy Wheeler

Ms. Wheeler writes about national security at the website Emptywheel.

Michael Cohen testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday.Erin Schaff/The New York Times


Michael Cohen testifying before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday.Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Even before Michael Cohen appeared before the House Oversight Committee to begin testifying Wednesday, he delivered explosive new information. Several days before WikiLeaks published Democratic National Committee emails on July 22, 2016, Roger Stone called Donald Trump and — on a speaker phone that permitted Mr. Cohen to hear — told the presidential candidate that “he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange,” who told him that “within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” According to Mr. Cohen, the president expressed happiness about the prospect “to the effect of ‘Wouldn’t that be great.’”

The detail is remarkable not just because it undercuts the president’s claims that Mr. Stone never provided him such details. It’s also a testament to how much critical information the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has kept hidden even in the most provocative of his “speaking indictments.” Even after months of investigation and voluminous indictments and sentencing memos, he’s still hiding events that lie at the core of his investigative mandate — events that involve the president directly.

With virtually every charging document in the Russia investigation, Mr. Mueller’s team has provided far more detail than necessary and, in the process, sketched out the framework of what the investigators found. The description of the lies of a former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, disclosed that the campaign first learned Russians were planning to dump emails from Mrs. Clinton in April 2016, before the Democrats figured out they had been hacked. Even as Russians were dangling those emails, another filing from Mr. Mueller shows, other Russians were pitching a ridiculously lucrative real estate deal that depended on the involvement of President Vladimir Putin. Indeed, that same filing revealed that Mr. Cohen took steps to travel to St. Petersburg, possibly to meet with Mr. Putin, around the same time that Donald Trump Jr. met with Russians asking for sanctions relief. Mr. Mueller’s description of Michael Flynn’s lies explained how Mr. Flynn persuaded the Russians to hold off on any response to President Barack Obama’s imposition of sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s election interference.

Each of those documents nods to Mr. Trump’s involvement. The document charging Mr. Papadopoulos, the foreign policy adviser, describes how he announced he was trying to set up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin. The Flynn document explains how his deputy, K.T. McFarland, closely orchestrated what Mr. Flynn would say in his calls with Russia’s ambassador at a time Ms. McFarland was reported to be at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Mr. Cohen’s charging document even describes the president himself as Individual-1, the kind of language often used to describe co-conspirators.

But Mr. Stone’s heads-up to Mr. Trump — and his enthusiastic response — went unmentioned in the indictment filed in January.

Certainly, the fact that Mr. Stone informed Mr. Trump of the forthcoming WikiLeaks email dump is consistent with an oblique line in his indictment. “By in or around June and July 2016,” the description of Stone’s lies explained, “Stone informed senior Trump Campaign officials that he had information indicating Organization 1 had documents whose release would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign.”

But that line didn’t disclose the most important bits of Mr. Cohen’s revelation: that among the “senior Trump Campaign officials” with whom Mr. Stone had discussed WikiLeaks’ forthcoming dumps was the candidate himself.

Nor does it disclose the timing of this particular disclosure, which Mr. Cohen in his testimony recalled happened on July 18 or 19. That’s significant not just because Mr. Stone predicted the timing of the release, just days away, as he would later predict details of the release of John Podesta’s emails. But it lines up eerily with a line in the indictment of 12 officers in a Russian intelligence organization, the G.R.U., who conducted the hack of the D.N.C. That document says that on July 18, WikiLeaks informed the G.R.U. online persona, Guccifer 2.0, that it had received a one-gigabyte archive “and would make a release of the stolen documents ‘this week.’”

In other words, Mr. Cohen’s revelation suggests that Mr. Stone was learning of WikiLeaks’ plans in the same time frame as the G.R.U. itself learned them.

None of that changes the substance of the lies that Mr. Mueller alleges Mr. Stone told, about communicating repeatedly with WikiLeaks through intermediaries to learn about and try to influence the release of stolen documents. But it is one indication that even Mr. Mueller’s often expansive charging documents are most interesting for their silences.

Mr. Mueller’s public filings have laid out a broad framework showing that Russians dangled a real estate deal and dirt on Hillary Clinton while asking for a range of sanctions relief. If Mr. Mueller were to charge this quid pro quo as a conspiracy or describe it as one in a report, it wouldn’t matter whether Mr. Trump knew of all the events that furthered the conspiracy. Because of the way conspiracy law works, it’s enough to show that Mr. Trump willingly entered into the conspiracy and took overt acts to pursue its objectives.

As Mr. Cohen’s testimony illustrates, Mr. Mueller has been hiding examples where Mr. Trump did applaud the conspiracy. “Wouldn’t that be great,” he reportedly said just before the fruits of Russia’s theft would start to do real damage to Democratic fortunes.

If Mr. Mueller is hiding similar examples, it suggests that whatever he plans to release in a report may have some unanticipated bombshells.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/opin ... eport.html

[Belligerent Savant]

if it wasn't for my postings of Kaspersky Lab AND Sergei Mikhailov NO ONE would even be reading about it here
no one else even bothered to bring up the topic and you wouldn't even have had the chance to way in and I accept your thanks for bringing it up

I'm compelled to correct you, there. Kasperskly Lab is also referenced in the Guccifer 2.0 analysis thread I cited several times here.

[and, if these articles you've been copy/pasting had more substantive/compelling details Re: Guccifer 2.0/Kaspersky/"Cozy Bear", I wouldn't have to weigh in at all...]

[seemslikeadream]

I guess I should have said I was the FIRST

what took you so long

Russia Biggest Cybersecurity Firm Head Arrested For Treason
1 ... 456by seemslikeadream » Wed Jan 25, 2017 11:45 pm
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40330

you say your stuff is more compelling...I am not sure of that

but of course let's discuss who was first and who thinks their stuff is more compelling....I think I'll leave it there

why don't you just bump your thread with new info or whatever if it is so important to you...what is it 5 times now you have mentioned the same thread here? It really doesn't matter how many times you mention it I am not changing my mind but I did see your link the first time you posted and the second time and the third time ...it in this thread...THIS IS NOT THE Guccifer 2.0 THREAD ONE OR TWO TIMES WOULD HAVE SUFFICED....I know what you think of my reading skills but I have read the multiple links to your thread ...really I have I'll admit that now can we please move on ...how would you like it if I went into that thread of yours and posted the same 5 links to my threads?

if you posted a 6th time I just might start to get annoyed

but see that is the difference between us I don't go into your threads with multiple links to the same thread ....I would NEVER do that no matter how much I disagree with you .....I don't advertise in other peoples threads and if I ever decided to I am damn sure it would not take on a multiple sideshow

How Cohen’s Testimony Backs Up the Case That Trump Helped Russia Attack the 2016 Election

The issue is not collusion—it’s aiding and abetting.

David CornFebruary 27, 2019 4:24 PM

Mother Jones illustration; Richard Drew/AP; Mark Makela/Getty

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Perhaps the most significant—and overlooked—aspect of the Trump-Russia scandal is that Donald Trump and his crew aided and abetted the Russian attack on the 2016 election by repeatedly denying or downplaying the clandestine Russian intervention aimed at assisting the president. Put aside the issue of direct collusion—say, Trump huddling with Russian President Vladimir Putin to figure out what Democratic emails to hack—the public record already establishes that Trump and his gang are guilty of echoing and reinforcing the Kremlin’s we-didn’t-do-it disinformation efforts, even after they had information indicating Moscow was covertly intervening. In that way, Trump helped Putin’s covert assault—an act of brazen information warfare—against the United States. And Michael Cohen’s historic and dramatic congressional testimony on Wednesday yielded new leads in this regard.

It’s already been demonstrated that Trump and his lieutenants possessed private knowledge that the Kremlin wanted to secretly assist the Trump effort during the campaign. In early June 2016, Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner—Trump’s top three campaign advisers—met in Trump Tower with a Russian emissary after being told she would deliver them dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a Moscow plot to help Trump. Two months later, Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, received a briefing from the US intelligence community in which he was told US analysts had concluded Moscow was behind the hack-and-dump attacks targeting Democrats. And from mid-June on, there were many media reports noting that cybersecurity experts and US intelligence agencies had fingered Russia as the culprit in the cyber break-in of the Democratic National Committee.

Yet throughout the campaign, the Trump team consistently declared in public that there was no reason to blame the Kremlin. (These denials prompted other Republicans, notably Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, to say little or nothing about the Russian attack.) Cohen’s testimony offered further reason to believe that Trump knew—or should have known—he was lying when he said Russia was not attacking the US election.

In his prepared statement, Cohen testified that he suspected that Trump was told by Trump Jr. about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. His testimony was not a slam dunk. Cohen noted that in the summer of 2017 when news of the Trump Tower meeting emerged, he recalled being in Trump’s office in early June 2016 and seeing Trump Jr. enter the office, walk behind the desk, and say in a low voice to his father, “The meeting is all set.” Cohen told the committee, “I remember Mr. Trump saying, ‘Okay good…let me know.'”

Cohen said he believes this sotto voce conversation between father and son was related to the Trump Tower meeting, but he did not produce any evidence to back up his suspicion. But Cohen did explain, “Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world. And also that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone—and certainly not without checking with his father. I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval.” Cohen’s statement echoed a comment made by Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and White House strategist, who said there was “zero” chance that Trump did not know about this meeting.

This makes two Trump intimates who maintain Trump was in the know about the Trump Tower meeting.

Cohen also testified that he was in Trump’s office in mid-July 2016 when Trump received a phone call from Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime adviser and a self-proclaimed political dirty trickster. According to Cohen, Trump put Stone on speakerphone, and Stone told Trump that he had just spoken with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and that Assange had said that within days there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Clinton’s campaign. Trump essentially replied, Cohen recalled, by saying, “Wouldn’t that be great?” Days later, on the eve of the Democratic convention, WikiLeaks did make public over 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

Cohen testified that he did not remember Stone and Trump discussing the origins of these emails. But weeks earlier, it had been reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the servers of the DNC. So it would not have been farfetched for Stone or Trump to assume the coming email dump was related to the Russian operation. And this testimony raises the possibility that Trump and/or Stone were in a position to obtain information about the WikiLeaks end of the Russian hack-and-dump attack. It is not proof of a connection between the Trump crowd and WikiLeaks. But when asked whether his claim that Stone and Trump discussed the WikiLeaks dump in advance could be corroborated, Cohen remarked, “I suspect that the special counsel’s office and other government agencies have the information that you’re seeking.”

So far, special counsel Robert Mueller has not disclosed any evidence that Stone, who’s been indicted for lying to Congress, was in direct contact with WikiLeaks. But Cohen’s comments deserve further congressional scrutiny that derives answers for the public. It’s notable that Trump, according to Cohen’s testimony, never spoke to the FBI or any law enforcement authorities after being told that Stone had an inside line to WikiLeaks.

Cohen told the committee that he had no evidence of direct collusion between Trump and the Russian attack. But he repeatedly characterized Trump as an inveterate liar who would say anything, however false, to serve his interests. And he stated that Trump continuously conveyed the message to Cohen and others around him that they were always to say there was no collusion and that the Trump-Russia investigation was nothing but a “witch hunt.” Cohen’s testimony reinforces the case that Trump lied during the campaign to divert attention from the Russian intervention—an act that benefitted a foreign adversary assaulting the United States. (Cohen also provided a firsthand account that Trump lied to the public about his secret effort to negotiate a deal in Russia, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, while campaigning for president.)

Throughout the hearing, Republican members of the committee, who fixated on discrediting Cohen, showed not a scintilla of concern that during the 2016 campaign Trump misled the public about both the Russian attack and his own private dealing in Russia. And Trump defenders will certainly latch onto Cohen’s assertion that he witnessed no clear evidence of direct collusion. But Cohen, who repeatedly acknowledged he had previously lied to Congress, offered testimony that buttressed a core component of the Trump-Russia scandal: Trump helped Putin’s cover-up. And that’s a crucial part of the story that should not be allowed to get lost.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... -election/

[RocketMan]

David Corn's credibility on this issue is thin to non-existent. After these tweets he has the gall to write THAT article.

The intellectual dishonesty involved is gargantuan.

MUELLER ON STEROIDS COMING. And the goalposts move as the overall theory requires. No amount of bolded, coloured text and exclamation points makes Corn any less craven than he is.

And SLAD, you may preen on your high horse as much as you like, your smug condescension and petty remarks reveal just how superior and above the conversation you consider yourself to be. Your peace, love & understanding and victimhood act is wearing extremely thin. There are other ways to insult people than calling them names, you know. Well, you obviously DO know.

[seemslikeadream]

what you had to post that Corn thing just to get personal with me

here we go again


lovely to see you to rocketguy...is it your turn now to derail this thread with personal stuff? Is this your shift?


AND BTW I LOVE DAVID CORN

big red letters so you wouldn't miss it

[seemslikeadream]

emptywheel

Mystery Appellant followers: Is it just me or did yesterday's reply have some of the snark that RU entities have asked their lawyers to use in other cases (most notably Concord)?




Beryl Howell likens Mystery Appellant not complying w/Mueller subpoena to someone escaping jail.



This mention of failure to enforce the subpoena--coupled w/language fr SCOTUS brief abt US citizens sheltering their criminal conduct w/foreign companies--is quite interesting.


On my more paranoid days I suspect people use digital redactions rather than blackout to piss me off personally.

[seemslikeadream]

Sarah Kendzior
"British institutions have been captured by Russian money. People who sit in parliament as lawmakers but get paid by Russian oligarchs are refusing to answer questions about what they do for them."

Feb 27 at 12:11am
Brexit and Trump are the Same Crime: The Carole Cadwalladr Interview
GN30_draft_3.mp3
We are thrilled to welcome Carole Cadwalladr to Gaslit Nation. Carole is an investigative journalist who breaks major stories on the Kremlin and Mercer-backed Brexit vote, revealing a cast of nefarious characters that were also behind the election of Donald Trump. Her brave reporting, which won her the Orwell Prize and makes her a target of hit pieces, has uncovered the growing vulnerability of elections in a time of kleptocracy.

Here's a look at just some of her stories:

British insurance businessman Arron Banks, the largest backer of Brexit and in UK political history by far, donating over 8 million GBP, has some interesting Kremlin connections: "Arron Banks, Brexit and the Russia connection"

A look at Cambridge Analytica, the militarized propaganda firm that drove both the Brexit and Trump elections: "The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked"

How Facebook played a destructive role in Brexit: "Our Cambridge Analytica scoop shocked the world. But the whole truth remains elusive"

Just like with Trump, there's a transnational crime syndicate that disrupted democracy in the UK, and major media, social meda corporations, and impotent officials are complicit. The evidence uncovered just so far is so damning that the UK deserves a second referendum on Brexit, as has been demanded by the growing grassroots movement known as The People's Vote.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been largely silent on Kremlin meddling in the Brexit vote. That may be the work of Corbyn's chief strategist Seumas Milne, an infamous and shocking supporter of the Kremlin's propaganda on everything from Ukraine (Russia's invasion is the West's fault and Russia's Crimea "referendum" on Ukrainian soil is perfectly legal!), Assad's mass-murdering of Syrians, and sympathy for Maduro in Venezuela despite widespread famine and a growing refugee crisis.

All this and more are discussed in our interview with Carole, the closest thing the UK seems to have at the moment to a Robert Mueller.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/brexit-and-trump-24963036

DISPATCH FEBRUARY 27, 2019
COHEN TESTIMONY TAKEAWAYS
Michael Cohen’s testimony reinforced just how open-and-shut the case for collusion has become. In his seven hours before the House Oversight Committee, Cohen provided answers to some of the key questions remaining in the Russia investigation.

The biggest new information in Cohen’s testimony: Donald Trump personally knew about collusion.

On July 18 or 19, 2016—a few days before WikiLeaks began publishing emails from the DNC—Roger Stone called Trump’s office to inform him that Stone “had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” (Stone has said that Cohen’s testimony is false.)
The Trump team could have alerted law enforcement, the intelligence community, or the American people. Instead, Trump responded “by saying something to the effect of ‘wouldn’t that be great,’” and kept lying to the American public about Russian meddling and his campaign’s contacts with the Kremlin.
This is the first direct confirmation that Trump himself personally knew about this collusion with the Kremlin—and raises some questions about his public request on July 27 for Russia to find Clinton’s “missing emails.”
The Trump campaign knew for months that Russia had hacked their opponents with the intention of helping Trump win the election.

In April, the Kremlin-linked professor Joseph Mifsud told Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that Russia had dirt on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” and planned to release them to hurt her candidacy.
Later, Rob Goldstone, an emissary of the Kremlin-linked oligarch Aras Agalarov, offered Trump Jr. dirt on Clinton “as part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump” on June 3.
By July, the public had also learned of that effort, thank to The Washington Post’s June 14 report that Russian operatives had hacked the DNC.
After the hack, the Trump team continued its undisclosed contacts and meetings until almost the day Trump took office.

Between Roger Stone’s heads-up and Trump’s inauguration, members of his team had at least 47 more secret contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals, including at least 11 meetings in person or over Skype.
Not only that, the Trump team allegedly actively sought to exploit Stone’s backchannel to WikiLeaks, directing him to reach out to Assange later in July and talking again about WikiLeaks in October.
Stone wasn’t the only member of Trump’s team to communicate with WikiLeaks: Trump Jr. also exchanged several direct messages with the organization’s Twitter account beginning in September.
Cohen’s testimony may mean Trump isn’t just on the hook for collusion—he also may be guilty of perjury. In his answers to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump reportedly wrote that he hadn’t had advance knowledge from Roger Stone about WikiLeaks, which Cohen directly contradicted.

Other notable moments that could have implications for the Russia investigation:

Cohen testified that Trump likely knew about the June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower. Cohen recounted an unexpected moment in early June when Donald Trump Jr. came into his father’s office in early June to tell him that “the meeting is all set.” That’s also a direct contradiction of Trump’s answers to Mueller, in which Trump reportedly wrote that his son didn’t tell him anything about the meeting at the time.
Cohen claimed Trump likely committed bank fraud, inflating his net worth in a loan application to Deutsche Bank, and insurance fraud, manipulating his assets’ values for insurance companies. That testimony is more than enough reason for House Democrats to begin subpoenaing his tax returns and other financial records, including those related to his relationship with Deutsche Bank.
Cohen poured cold water on Trump’s repeated efforts to distance himself from Felix Sater. He provided new details about Sater’s proximity to Trump and asserting that Trump’s claims in a 2013 deposition that he wouldn’t even recognize Sater was at best misleading and, “at worst, lying under oath.”
Cohen confirmed that the president’s legal team helped him prepare for the 2017 testimony in which he lied to Congress. He asserted that Trump lawyers Jay Sekulow and Abbe Lowell edited the written answers he provided to Congress and were partially responsible for its inaccuracy.
Cohen revealed there is an ongoing Trump investigation. Asked about his most recent conversations with the president, Cohen said it occurred roughly two months after investigators raided his home, office, and hotel room in June 2018—but that he couldn’t provide any details because those interactions were part of an ongoing investigation by the Southern District of New York.
https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/c ... takeaways/

[seemslikeadream]

southpaw
‏

Newly unsealed documents confirm that the mystery grand jury case relates to records sought by the Special Counsel’s Office (as Politico reported ages ago based on an overheard remark in the DC courthouse) and specifically the Russia/collusion investigation.




Here’s a link, via @ZoeTillman. https://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/ ... inions.pdf …

Not in my interest to say it, but I don’t know why this form of redaction—which doesn’t disclose the length of the redacted text—isn’t a more standard practice.

An interesting phrase, written by the SCO to the mystery foreign govt-owned company’s counsel over 7 months ago:



There is a very closely held document, secret even to the mysterious foreign govt owned company, that persuaded the DC Court that something about that mystery company’s commercial activities in the US “is part of” the Special Counsel’s Russia/collusion investigation.

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/ ... 0069382144

[seemslikeadream]

Spain asks to jail Russian MP for 5.5 years over mafia ties

18:13 / 19.02.2018
Spain asks to jail Russian MP for 5.5 years over mafia ties

Vladislav Reznik came to Spain with his wife to "redeem his name" and prove his innocence. He said he trusts the court of the kingdom.

Spain has started the trial of the persons captured in the Troika Operation and suspected of links with Russian criminal groups, according to Inopressa.ru that quoted the Spanish press. The defendants were detained by Spanish law enforcers in 2008 and belonged to Tambovskaya gang, which had operated in Spain since 1996. They are accused of belonging to the criminal community and money laundering.

According to RBC, State Duma deputy Vladislav Reznik is one of the accused. He used to serve as chairman of the Committee on Credit Institutions and Financial Markets and was a member of the National Banking Council of Russia. The deputy arrived in Spain together with his wife Diana Gindin, who is also on trial. The prosecutor's office requested five and a half years of imprisonment for Reznik and a fine of 100 million euros. Reznik and Gindin deny any wrongdoing. According to Alexander Gofshtein, the lawyer of the couple, they came to Spain "willing to redeem their name" and prove their innocence. The deputy said he trusts the court of the kingdom, TASS reported.

The gang leaders, Gennady Petrov and Alexander Malyshev, managed to avoid the trial, being outside of Spain. Their "alleged advisers and accomplices" will be tried. Petrov and Malyshev were arrested during the Troika Operation, but were later released from custody and are currently on the run. At some point, Alexander Malyshev was seen in St. Petersburg.

According to the investigation, the group supervised crimes committed in Russia, while being in the Balearic Islands, Levant and Costa del Sol. The proceeds from the crimes were transported to Spain with the assistance of legal and financial consultants, who worked for the group "almost exclusively". The Spanish prosecutor's office referred to the Tambovskaya gang as a "multifaceted organization" that used Spain to launder criminal proceeds by expanding capital and issuing loans to each other by firms that joined the criminal network.

Charges were brought against 26 persons, but only 18 stood the trial. The rest of the accused were put on the wanted list, and warrants were issued for their arrest. It is noted that six of the criminals are Spaniards.

ABC stated that part of the money that had been channeled to Spain by criminal means was invested in real estate.
https://en.crimerussia.com/organizedcri ... afia-ties/

Connected.
My God... what a hero Litvinenko was. He went right for the wallet controlling the Kremlin.

Russian mafia boss still at large after FBI wiretap at Trump Tower



There, indeed, was an FBI wiretap involving Russians at Trump Tower.

But it was not placed at the behest of Barack Obama, and the target was not the Trump campaign of 2016. For two years ending in 2013, the FBI had a court-approved warrant to eavesdrop on a sophisticated Russian organized crime money-laundering network that operated out of unit 63A in Trump Tower in New York.

The FBI investigation led to a federal grand jury indictment of more than 30 people, including one of the world’s most notorious Russian mafia bosses, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Known as the “Little Taiwanese,” he was the only target to slip away, and he remains a fugitive from American justice.

Seven months after the April 2013 indictment and after Interpol issued a red notice for Tokhtakhounov, he appeared near Donald Trump in the VIP section of the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. Trump had sold the Russian rights for Miss Universe to a billionaire Russian shopping mall developer.

“He is a major player,” said Mike Gaeta, the agent who led the 2013 FBI investigation of Tokhtakhounov and his alleged mafia money-laundering and gambling ring, in a 2014 interview with ABC News. “He is prominent. He has extremely good connections in the business world as well as the criminal world, overseas, in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, other countries.”

Gaeta, who ran the FBI’s Eurasian organized crime unit in New York, told ABC News at the time that federal agents were closely tracking Tokhtakhounov, whose Russian ring was suspected of moving more than $50 million in illegal money into the United States.

“Because of his status, we have kept tabs on his activities and particularly as his activities truly enter New York City,” Gaeta said. “Their money was ultimately laundered from Russia, Ukraine and other locations through Cyprus banks and shell companies based in Cyprus and then ultimately here to the United States.”

The FBI investigation did not implicate Trump. But Trump Tower was under close watch. Some of the Russian mafia figures worked out of unit 63A in the iconic skyscraper — just three floors below Trump’s penthouse residence — running what prosecutors called an “international money-laundering, sports gambling and extortion ring.”

The Trump building was home to one of the top men in the alleged ring, Vadim Trincher, who pleaded guilty to racketeering and received a five-year prison term. He is due to be released in July.

“Everything was moving in and out of there,” said former FBI official Rich Frankel, now an ABC News consultant.

“He would have people come in and meet with them. He would use the phones. He would also communicate, whether it was through e-mail or other communications through there,” Frankel said of Trincher. “His base of operations was in the Trump Tower.”

In court papers, the FBI described two years of intercepts of phone conversations and text message exchanges of the key figures in the gambling ring.

“Mr. Vladim Trincher was on one occasion intercepted speaking with a customer of the gambling operation who owed a debt of $50,000,” one court document stated. Trincher told the gambler about an enforcer who works with him named Maxin. On the recording, Trincher “threatens the customer that Maxin would come and find him, would come and find the money and that he should be careful, lest he be tortured and lest he wind up underground.”

Last fall, a Trump Organization spokesman told ABC News that Russians did not make up a disproportionate share of residents in Trump properties. Federal agents confiscated four units in connection with the poker ring: two in New York and two in Sunny Isles, Florida.

ABC News conducted a review of hundreds of pages of property records and reported in September that Trump-branded developments catered to large numbers of Russian buyers, including several who had brushes with the law. Russian buyers were particularly drawn to Trump licensed condo towers in Hollywood, Florida, and Sunny Isles. Local real estate agents credited the Russian migration for turning the coastal Miami-area community into what they called Little Moscow.

Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten told ABC News at the time that the firm did not track the nationality of buyers and that the company rarely plays a role in recruiting buyers — a job typically left to developers that buy rights to use the Trump name. Neither Garten nor Trump Organization spokeswoman Amanda Miller responded this week to questions from ABC News about the 2013 poker raid.

Nor did they respond to questions about Tokhtakhounov, who, despite Interpol’s international red notice, is regularly seen in Moscow at popular restaurants and other public places. The poker case was not the first to target Tokhtakhounov. He was indicted years earlier in the United States, accused of paying bribes to Olympic judges so that Russian figure skaters would win gold medals.
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/story-fbi-wir ... ories.html

Organized crime is now a major element of Russia statecraft

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with the State Council Presidium on developing the fisheries sector at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, October 19, 2015. REUTERS/Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool
Russia's President Vladimir Putin speaks during a meeting with the State Council Presidium on developing the fisheries sector at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow
Thomson Reuters
In the past couple years, Russian hackers have launched attacks on a French television network, a German steelmaker, the Polish stock market, the White House, the US House of Representatives, the US State Department, and The New York Times.
And according to press reports citing Western intelligence officials, the perpetrators weren't rogue cyber-pranksters. They were working for the Kremlin.

Cybercrime, it appears, has become a tool of Russian statecraft. And not just cybercrime.

Vladimir Putin's regime has become increasingly adept at deploying a whole range of practices that are more common among crime syndicates than permanent members of the UN Security Council.

In some cases, as with the hacking, this involves the Kremlin subcontracting organized crime groups to do things the Russian state cannot do itself with plausible deniability. And in others, it involves the state itself engaging in kidnapping, extortion, blackmail, bribery, and fraud to advance its agenda.

Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda has noted that the activities of Russian criminal networks are virtually indistinguishable from those of the government.

"It's not so much a mafia state as a nationalized mafia," Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University and co-host of the Power Vertical Podcast, said in a recent lecture at the Hudson Institute.

Hackers, Gangsters, And Goblins

According to a report by the FBI and US intelligence agencies, Russia is home to the most skilled community of cybercriminals on the globe, and the Kremlin has close ties to them.

"They have let loose the hounds," Tom Kellermann, chief security officer at Trend Micro, a Tokyo-based security firm, told Bloomberg News.

Citing unidentified officials, Bloomberg reported that Russian hackers had stepped up surveillance of essential infrastructure, including power grids and energy-supply networks, in the United States, Europe, and Canada.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of the security firm CrowdStrike, noted recently that the Russian security services have been actively recruiting an army of hackers.

"When someone is identified as being technically proficient in the Russian underground," a pending criminal case against them "suddenly disappears and those people are never heard from again," Alperovitch said in an interview with The Hill, adding that the hacker in question is then working for the Russian security services.

"We know that's going on," Alperovitch added.

And as a result, criminal hackers "that used to hunt banks eight hours a day are now operating two hours a day turning their guns on NATO and government targets," Kellermann of Trend Micro told The Hill, adding that these groups are "willingly operating as cyber-militias."

The hacking is just one example of how the Kremlin effectively uses organized crime as a geopolitical weapon.

Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbas.

In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.

In annexed Crimea, the Kremlin installed a reputed gangster known as "The Goblin" as the peninsula's chief executive.

And of course there is the case of Eston Kohver, the Estonian law enforcement officer who was investigating a smuggling ring run jointly by Russian organized crime groups and the Russian Federal Security Service.

Kohver was kidnapped in Estonia September 2014, brought across the Russian border at gunpoint, and convicted of espionage. He was released in a prisoner exchange last month.

The Geopolitics Of Extortion

But Putin's mafia statecraft doesn't just involve using and colluding with organized crime groups.

It often acts like an organized crime group itself.

Russian Cars
The outer walls of the Kremlin, in Moscow.
YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images
In some cases this involves using graft as a means of control. This is a tactic Moscow has deployed throughout the former Soviet space, involving elites in corrupt schemes — everything from shady energy deals or money-laundering operations -- to secure a "captured constituency."

This is a tactic Russia attempted to use in Georgia following the 2003 Rose Revolution and in Ukraine after the 2004 Orange Revolution, where "corruption and shadow networks were mobilized to undermine the new leadership's reform agenda," according to James Greene in a 2012 report for Chatham House.

This was particularly successful in Ukraine, where opaque gas deals were used "to suborn Ukraine's post-Orange Revolution new leadership," Greene wrote.

And Putin is clearly hoping to repeat this success in eastern Ukraine today — especially after elections are held in the rebel areas of Donbas.

"His bet in the eastern Ukraine local election, if it ever takes place, won't be on the rebel field commanders but on local oligarchs who ran the region before the 2014 'revolution of dignity.' Through them, he will hope to exert both economic and political influence on Kiev." political commentator Leonid Bershidsky wrote in Bloomberg View.

In addition to graft, Moscow has also effectively utilized blackmail — making the international community a series of offers it can't refuse.

It's a neat trick. First you create instability, as in Ukraine, or exasperate existing instability, as in Syria.Then offer your services to establish order.

You essentially create demand -- and then meet it. You get to act like a rogue and be treated like a statesman.

It's how protection rackets operate. And it has become one of the pillars of Putin's foreign policy.

Members of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic drive a tank on the outskirts of Donetsk
Thomson Reuters
"It's the geopolitics of extortion, but it's probably working," Galeotti told Voice of America in a recent interview.
"He's identifying a whole series of potential trouble spots around the world, places that matter to the West, and is essentially indicating that he can either be a good partner, if they're willing to make a deal with him, or he can stir up more trouble."

Read the original article on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Reprinted with the permission of RFE/RL, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.

Copyright 2019. Follow Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Twitter.
https://www.businessinsider.com/organiz ... ft-2015-10

Cliff notes.



Hi cyber



Mob.





I've been telling you...



... what the next...



... Hollywood connected scandal...



... would be...





https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/statu ... 3339888640

[RocketMan]

Why in the name of all that is good & holy would you assume that people on THIS BOARD would take ANYTHING "the FBI and US intelligence agencies" say as sincere truth? Why would we? We come to this board because we believe pretty much THE OPPOSITE is true.

[seemslikeadream]

quit putting words in my mouth. QUIT MAKING SHIT UP ABOUT ME.........you can think anything you want I am not forcing you to do ANYTHING!!!

I DON'T ASSUME ANYTHING BUT YOU CERTAINLY DO!

RAG RAG RAG RAG RAG ...IS THAT ALL YOU DO HERE WHY WOULD YOU ASSUME ANYONE HERE WANTS TO HEAR YOU RAG
YOU SPEND MORE TIME HERE RAGGING ON ME....WHY CAN'T YOU FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO ...ISN'T THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU ARE INTERESTED IN?

IT SEEMS NOW YOU ARE REALLY DONE WITH THE SADNESS YOU TALKED ABOUT

BACK ON TOPIC

can't reproduce this series of tweets so I will only post the first

So many coincidences tsk tsk

JUNE 22, 2016:
WL asks G2 for the stolen DNC emails

Trump speech:
“So they probably now have a BLACKMAIL FILE over someone who wants to be president of the United States,"

Screenshot 2 & 3 from June 2016 in dossier.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-sec ... ton-emails

Starting Aug 2, 2016:
MANAFORT and GATES transfer POLLING DATA to KILIMNIK
33 SERVER LOOKUPS (total)
ALFA TRUMP SPECTRUM
https://twitter.com/LuluLemew/status/11 ... 6076950528

IT SEEMS THERE WILL BE A NEVER ENDING DESIRE TO DERAIL THIS THREAD SEEMS SOMEONE DOES NOT LIKE THIS THREAD TOO FUCKING BAD! START A THREAD ABOUT SOMETHING YOU ARE INTERESTED IN BESIDES DERAILING MY THREADS!!!!!!!!!

[RocketMan]

Did you highlight this because you consider these agencies to be reliable and sincere? If you think you are consistently being misunderstood and misrepresented, perhaps you should try to communicate more clearly instead of through insinuations via screen caps. And by the way, no one "owns" any threads here just because they started them. It's just a rule you made up.

[seemslikeadream]

I didn't do the highlighting ....duh!

what can't you see the link???

any way tell me what is wrong with that statement ...tooo harsh on Russia for your taste?


I LOVE LINCOLN'S BIBLE

and I will keep linking to him .

[RocketMan]

I'm not touching this thread anymore with a stick. Have at it, document away.