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The Russia Investigation: Trump Pardons Flynn (8 Viewers)

Rove! said:
Why was Churkin identified as a potential donor?   He's not even a citizen and presumably not registered to vote.  I vote and I don't get those letters.   How did he get on their mailing list?
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You probably don't have an address on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Tellya Rove, the funniest thing about that is it indicates that someone feels the need to link up Churkin and McCain because they know there are whispers about Trump and Churkin having a relationship going back 30 years and as recently as 2013 in Moscow.


- Oh it was WL itself.

Weird, almost like they're deflecting with an imagined conflict.

The story was reported back in 2008.
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Almost like Wikileaks goes out of their way to defend Russia...

 
Interesting new rundown of the Steele Dossier. It looks like this blogger will be building things out gradually.

I have broken down the Steele dossier into individual allegations and their sources. The entire breakdown can be found here. I’ll work through the major claims in the dossier and their support within the dossier, presented here in the table form of the breakdown. I am not evaluating the truthfulness of the claims. That requires material outside the dossier.

... Much more can be done with the breakdown of the Steele dossier. I am collecting relevant information within its framework and plan more posts.
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From July:

The Real Winner of the RNC: Vladimir Putin



The Trump campaign continues its terrifying effort to cozy up to the Kremlin.


Donald Trump’s convention has been marked by gross incompetence in all areas save one: He’s been highly effective in moving the Republican Party toward Vladimir Putin. The deftness of this reversal of policy is so anomalous that we need to consider its causes, as well as its consequences.
To recap: The Trump campaign showed little interest in the writing of the Republican Party platform, even as the document evolved to undermine the nominee’s political strategy and took stances at odds with his own. But his aides did intervene aggressively in one committee meeting. They pushed hard to soften the platform’s stance on providing military assistance to Ukraine. When pressed about this change, Trump aides literally ran in the other direction.

I just asked Sam Clovis, top policy adviser to Trump, about platform language on Russia. "I can't talk about," he said and walked away.

— Ryan Lizza (@RyanLizza) July 20, 2016

Then, on Wednesday, Trump told the New York Times that he would abandon our nearly seven decades–old commitment to collective security in Europe. If Putin rolled tanks into Eastern Europe, Trump would have to check whether those countries paid their fair share to NATO before fulfilling our obligations to protect them.
If these were sincere positions, they might be defensible. The Obama administration has been reluctant to arm the Ukrainians. There’s a coherent case to be made for American retrenchment in the world. The problem is that Donald Trump and his campaign aren’t staking out ideological positions. As I have argued, Trump has a long history of sucking up to Russian political leaders to advance his business interests in that country. His praise of Putin has correlated with large infusions of Russian cash into his real estate projects. Furthermore, his campaign is staffed by aides with financial ties to the Russian state.
For his part, Putin has recognized the opportunity that the Trump campaign presents. He has thrown Russian propaganda behind it; his intelligence services have purloined documents from Democratic Party servers, and they have begun publishing them on the internet.
And why not? Trump is Putin’s geo-strategic dream. NATO has been effective at curbing Putin’s military adventurism. Russia may mess around in eastern Ukraine, but it won’t set foot in Estonia or Poland. That’s because it has little interest in fighting a war with an alliance obligated to protect those countries. Rather than facing a resolute, unified West, he prefers conducting a negotiation with a fragmented one and has sought to destabilize Europe through support of Trump-like figures in France, Italy, and elsewhere. Nobody believes in the art of the deal more than Vladimir Putin—and in Trump, he sees a naïve, egomaniac whom he can roll.
Now that the subject of Putin’s relationship to the Trump campaign has become part of the conversation, there are several questions that require answering. And many of these pertain to Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
As I have reported, Manafort didn’t just represent oligarchs tight with the Kremlin. He became business partners with them. He ran a private equity fund in which the aluminum magnate (and Putin pal) Oleg Deripaska invested millions. As the Washington Post has shown, this fund didn’t exactly do much investing. In fact, Manafort struggled to account for the cash he received. And rather than pay back Deripaska, he apparently went underground. In 2014, Deripaska’s lawyers noted, “It appears that Paul Manafort and [his business partner] Rick Gates have simply disappeared”: Manafort’s vanishing became a joke in certain Republican circles. So why has Manafort suddenly felt comfortable re-emerging into public view? How did he square his debts with Putin’s ally?
Another question for the campaign chairman: What are his dealings with the Kremlin? It’s clear that he has advanced its interests in Ukraine, where he managed the political rehabilitation of its favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. He also went into business with one of the Kremlin’s primary natural gas middlemen, Dmitry Firtash. To what extent did these relationships bring him into the inner sanctum of Russian power?
It’s a murky realm and the questions have more than the whiff of conspiracy. But the circumstantial evidence is mounting. Given that the Trump campaign seems determined to reverse decades of core American policy, policy that Putin has worked assiduously to erode, it seems foolish not to consider the dark possibilities.
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So, cut today:
 

...An Austrian court has ruled that one of Ukraine's richest men, Dmytro Firtash, can be extradited to the US to face corruption charges.

...

The oligarch, who has been in Austria since the US made the allegations in 2013, has now been arrested.

Mr Firtash, a former ally of ousted Ukraine leader Viktor Yanukovych, says he is the victim of a smear campaign.

His gas and chemicals business thrived before the pro-Moscow Mr Yanukovych was overthrown and fled to Russia in February 2014.


'Absolutely untrue'


Mr Firtash was indicted by a US grand jury for allegedly conspiring to pay millions of dollars in bribes to Indian officials through US banks.

... Mr Firtash was first detained in 2014 in Vienna, but was released after posting a record Austrian bail of €125m (£102m).

...

Mr Manafort and Mr Firtash were linked in a real estate project to redevelop the Drake Hotel site in Manhattan.

Mr Yanukovych's opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, argued this was a money-laundering project to siphon huge amounts of cash out of Ukraine. ...

Last August, the New York Times reported finding ledgers pledging $12.7m (£9.8m) in undisclosed cash payments from the former Russian-backed Ukrainian government to Mr Manafort between 2007 and 2012. ...
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- Basically the allegation is that Russian / Putin-ally money was exported out of country and laundered through Manhattan real estate.

- Fwiw Felix Sater was also in real estate.

- There is a lot of Russian real estate investment in South Florida too.

- Oh hey the US government is extraditing Manafort's business partner.
 
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Bucky86 said:
Not a very good lawyer if you ask me.
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Says who?

All of Page, Cohen and Stone have categorically denied being contacted by the FBI or any government agency in very recent interviews. Just as they all denied having been in contact with Russian officials during the campaign (in Stones casing having prior knowledge of the DNC hacks), I believe they're again lying. They're all making a concerted effort to bury this. Again, I'm not a body language expert but in Stone's latest interview (which I'll try to find) he often shakes his head when affirming a question and nods his head when denying an allegation. Regardless, I have a really hard time believing Stone didn't have prior knowledge of the Wikileaks hacks..

He tweeted about it ~week before the Podesta email dump..

Roger Stone @RogerJStoneJr

Wednesday@HillaryClinton is done. #Wikileaks.
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He's bragged about communicating with Assange here and again talks about having back-channel communications with Wikileaks here on Alex Jones's show.

I think it's super clear that everyone within Trump's sphere of influence have constantly and consistently lied about their connections to Russia - even when it was blatantly obvious - even when there was exactly zero upside in doing so.

Also, has anyone been keeping tabs on the Firtash extradition case that happened early this morning in Austria? Rachel Maddow did a really good job of covering it yesterday. Honestly, MSNBC is all over this and is essentially caught up with this thread. Anyway, Firtash was indeed granted extradition to the U.S and there are some in the media who think he'll flip like a flapjack. 

 
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Good article on Firtash, his history and the dilemma currently before the Trump DOJ/State.

In all this, Firtash again finds himself the man in the middle—a canary in a coal mine for the Trump Justice Department. After Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration was widely perceived to be retaliating against Putin by going after his oligarchs. Should Firtash be forced into the U.S. to face charges, many observers have wondered, what might he have to offer the U.S. in exchange for a plea? Perhaps intelligence about Putin? About others in his inner circle? The U.S. has fought for extradition for three years—but there is a new president now. The Justice and State departments aren’t commenting on the case. But if the administration reverses course and no longer pushes hard on the Firtash prosecution, that would send a pretty clear signal that the president’s embrace of Russia and Putin is real.
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Ukraine Lawmaker Who Worked With Trump Associates Faces Treason Inquiry


Prosecutors in Ukraine are investigating whether a member of Parliament committed treason by working with two associates of President Trump’s to promote a plan for settling Ukraine’s conflicts with Russia.

In a court filing on Tuesday, prosecutors accused the lawmaker, Andrii V. Artemenko, of conspiring with Russia to commit “subversive acts against Ukraine,” in particular by advancing a proposal that could “legitimize the temporary occupation” of the Crimean peninsula. Russia forcibly annexed the peninsula in 2014, a step that Ukraine, the United States and other governments have refused to recognize; Mr. Artemenko said his proposal would allow Ukraine to formally cede control of the territory to Russia, at least temporarily.

Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraine’s prosecutor general, posted a copy of the court filing to his Facebook page on Tuesday with the statement “Ukraine’s integrity is above all else.”

...
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/world/europe/andrii-artemenko-ukraine-russia.html

- This is reminiscent of the Zimmerman Letter.

- Moscow's little ploys seem to be backfiring.

 
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... What really struck observers in Ukraine about the plan was its reported author, Andrii Artemenko, who according to the Times “sees himself as a Trump-style leader of a future Ukraine.” “That’s the thing,” said Natalia Gumenyuk, the head of the Hromadske.tv, a prominent news outlet that gained stature as the television station of the Maidan protests. “None of us had heard much about him.” What she had heard about him was that he was “marginal,” “a really obscure member of parliament from a shady political party.” She observed that “it’s interesting that it’s this kind of person who got in touch with someone over there,” in the United States.

On Monday morning, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov concurred. “MP Artemenko, who proposed leasing Crimea to Russia, is a marginal figure without any authority,” he wrote in a post on Facebook.

Both Avakov and Serhiy Leshchenko, a young member of the Rada and a former investigative journalist, suspect the plan originated not with Artemenko, who heads an obscure right-wing party, but among members of the Opposition Bloc, a parliamentary faction that formed in 2014 from remnants of the old party of the ousted pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych.

In any case, it would stand to reason that the Kremlin would try to get as much of what it wants in Ukraine as possible before the whole Trump-Putin romance falls apart. According to my U.S. sources, the Russians started putting sticks in the wheels of the Minsk ceasefire negotiations in October, when they saw Trump’s election as increasingly likely, hoping that with Trump in the White House, they would get more favorable terms in Ukraine. It would seem now that the Kremlin is using a familiar tactic, using a previously unheard-of, third-tier person as a front for much more powerful figures—like pro-Russian MPs in Kiev.

“All these signals are coming either from the Russian Federation or from their allies here inside the country,” Nayyem told me. “The fact that this proposal was put forward by an obscure Ukrainian politician speaks to the fact that this is an attempt to feel out the environment and try to understand whether [Ukrainian] society is ready for this. Fortunately, these attempts only unite the Ukrainian political class against any sort of trade negotiations when it comes to Ukrainian territory.”

“The proposal and the way it’s being unveiled reeks of Kremlin manipulation,” said Lena Surzhko-Harned, an expert on Ukrainian politics at University of Pittsburgh. “Find a low-ranking financially interested goon, prop him up, give him instructions and let the games begin. ...
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https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/02/ukraine-peace-plan/517275/

 
SameSongNDance said:
Says who?

All of Page, Cohen and Stone have categorically denied being contacted by the FBI or any government agency in very recent interviews. Just as they all denied having been in contact with Russian officials during the campaign (in Stones casing having prior knowledge of the DNC hacks), I believe they're again lying. They're all making a concerted effort to bury this. Again, I'm not a body language expert but in Stone's latest interview (which I'll try to find) he often shakes his head when affirming a question and nods his head when denying an allegation. Regardless, I have a really hard time believing Stone didn't have prior knowledge of the Wikileaks hacks..

He tweeted about it ~week before the Podesta email dump..

He's bragged about communicating with Assange here and again talks about having back-channel communications with Wikileaks here on Alex Jones's show.

I think it's super clear that everyone within Trump's sphere of influence have constantly and consistently lied about their connections to Russia - even when it was blatantly obvious - even when there was exactly zero upside in doing so.

Also, has anyone been keeping tabs on the Firtash extradition case that happened early this morning in Austria? Rachel Maddow did a really good job of covering it yesterday. Honestly, MSNBC is all over this and is essentially caught up with this thread. Anyway, Firtash was indeed granted extradition to the U.S and there are some in the media who think he'll flip like a flapjack. 
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The FBI won't contact them until the have a rock solid case and want them to roll on Trump.  That's how the FBI works, so I'm not surprised they haven't been contacted.  Cohen is going to claim attorney-client privilege anyway, so there is no reason to contact him until any indictment.  I'm sure Page has been contacted overseas by the CIA or other overseas agency without knowing it.

 
Sammy3469 said:
The FBI won't contact them until the have a rock solid case and want them to roll on Trump. That's how the FBI works, so I'm not surprised they haven't been contacted. Cohen is going to claim attorney-client privilege anyway, so there is no reason to contact him until any indictment. I'm sure Page has been contacted overseas by the CIA or other overseas agency without knowing it.
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My mistake, thanks for clearing that up. 

 
PlasmaDogPlasma said:
Is there any credible source reporting anything about this? Because right now it reads like a liberal InfoWars headline.
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I think she's fleshing it out right now, I don't know what the source is/if there is even a source yet.

Also this was tweeted out by a guy who seems to run in their circle a little earlier. I have no idea if it's connected nor do I know if "eve" is supposed to be interpreted literally.

 
Eric Garland[SIZE=12.6px]Verified account[/SIZE]‏@ericgarland  2h2 hours ago




More




So today, on the eve of Trump's exposure, Putin prances around and declares an official department of propaganda and trolls British troops.
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Edit: Eric is referencing this.

Edit 2: I actually do think the tweets are connected because he linked her article referencing it in the tweet storm.

 
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Intelligence Committee Could Subpoena Trump Tax Returns



Susan Collins says panel will go where Russia inquiry leads it


Sen. Susan Collins said she thinks the Intelligence Committee could subpoena President Donald Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into Russian interference in last year’s election if that’s where the evidence leads.

“I don’t know whether we will need to do that,” the Maine Republican said Wednesday. “If it’s necessary to get to the answers, then I suspect that we would.”

Collins said during an appearance on Maine Public Radio that such a decision would come first from Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr and Vice Chairman Mark Warner.

“My hope is that we’ll have a lot of voluntary cooperation,” Collins said. “And keep in mind that in some ways, this is a counterintelligence operation — in many ways — and that’s what our committee specializes in.”

Collins said she would be asking for former national security adviser Michael Flynn to testify before the committee.

“We’re not going to exclude anyone from our review,” she said.

The four-term senator told one of the public radio callers that it was important, in the end, that the panel members “end up with a public report of our findings.” She also noted that the GOP only holds a one-seat majority on the committee.

“There are law enforcement implications, and we want to make sure that we’re doing it right,” said Collins, who made a brief reference to last Friday’s two-hour Intelligence Committee briefing that featured FBI Director James B. Comey.

“We are used to probing in-depth in this area,” she said.
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http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/susan-collins-intelligence-committee-subpoena-trump-tax-returns-needed

- Make it so.

 
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SameSongNDance said:
I think she's fleshing it out right now, I don't know what the source is/if there is even a source yet.
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Mensch relies on a lot of crowdsourcing. I do happen to find her pursuit of Michael Cohen's travel itineraries fascinating, and her detailing of Dmitry Rybolov's plane visits to Miami in time with Trump's pretty interesting too, and she put out the memo on the universal theory of Trumpgate... but she does a lot of speculating and dot-drawing. I'm curious how she links up the Carolina group to Russia, but Weiner didn't need any help doing compromising things on his own laptop.


 
These interviews followed her trip, with her husband Eric, to Gastonia, Gaston County, North Carolina. According to the Gaston County Gazette, Lara and Eric Trump visited the GOP headquarters there on October 21st.

The ’15 year old teen’ and her ‘attorney father’ are ostensibly from… Gaston, North Carolina.
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https://patribotics.wordpress.com/2017/02/14/the-carolina-conspiracy-putin-catfished-weiner-louise-mensch/

- So Mensch says stay tuned. But right now that seems a pretty tenuous, same place same time, idea.

- The other connection is Dana Boente prosecuted the CWA case, which again is tenuous because that was his department.

- I do think the Nikulin indictment must be significant and she posts that, and I'd agree that Weiner was an obvious target for foreign intelligence hackers, but she still has to make the leap from Nikulin to CWA to Boente (and Laura and Eric Trump) to the victim is a plant all the way to Trump himself. Lots of lillypad jumping there.

 
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PlasmaDogPlasma said:
Bucky86 said:
Woh.....

Louise Mensch[SIZE=12.600000381469727px]Verified account[/SIZE]‏@LouiseMensch  7m7 minutes ago




More




Louise Mensch Retweeted Amy

Carolina Hacking group for Russia who set up fake sexts on Weiner phone, worked with corrupt FBI to set up Comey letter
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Is there any credible source reporting anything about this? Because right now it reads like a liberal InfoWars headline.
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I haven't seen it elsewhere yet.

The group she's talking about is Crackas With Attitude, who were arrested last year for hacking the CIA and FBI.  One of them pleaded guilty last month.

Louise MenschVerified account‏@LouiseMensch 1h1 hour ago

Louise Mensch Retweeted Mary Beth Schneider

Crackas With Attitude. Related to Lulzsec, it now appears Hackers working for Russia; catfished Weiner, set up letter
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edited to add: It looks like the other guy pleaded guilty as well.

 
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SaintsInDome2006 said:
- Trump and Putin in particular recently have been determined to destroy the media quickly and how in the last few days. There has been a real urgency about it. Today also (other thread) the James O'Keefe threat to 'expose' CNN.
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Yeah, it seems like they've synced their rhetoric. What connection do you think the supposed CNN leaks have? Are they meant to distract?


 


James O'Keefe‏@JamesOKeefeIII


Daha fazla





Being interviewed by Russia 1 TV abt election & @georgesoros. Russians love @Project_Veritas. Don't worry, they said they wouldn't hack me.
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White House Chief Digital Officer Gerrit Lansing was among the six staffers who were dismissed from the White House last week after being unable to pass an FBI background check, according to sources.
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http://www.politico.com/blogs/donald-trump-administration/2017/02/gerrit-lansing-trump-digital-chief-ousted-235268

- Six staffers denied clearance.

- Typical reasons for denial of clearance can include violation of classified guidelines in prior federal work, financial (financial influence), personal deviant/alcohol/drug habits, and foreign influence.

 
Global economy.

- Russia is just to the left of and smaller than South Korea.

Meanwhile, Yanukovych sends yet another personal peace plan to Trump, this time using the mail.

Oleh Lyashko, leader of the Radical Party, kicked Mr. Artemenko out of his parliamentary faction.

“Russia is an aggressor, Russia is an occupier, and Russia should get the hell out of Crimea and Donbas,” he said.
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- Putin needs the Ukraine situation cauterised (no US military aid, no threat of NATO membership or intervention) so he can make a peace deal.

- Problem is the Ukrainians aren't having any of it and they aren't buying any more Yanukovychs or his clones.

 
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A purported cyberhack of the daughter of political consultant Paul Manafort suggests that he was the victim of a blackmail attempt while he was serving as Donald Trump’s presidential campaign chairman last summer.

The undated communications, which are allegedly from the iPhone of Manafort’s daughter, include a text that appears to come from a Ukrainian parliamentarian named Serhiy Leshchenko, seeking to reach her father, in which he claims to have politically damaging information about both Manafort and Trump.
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link

 
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