(Flagged.)
Nice piece. The words âcurrentlyâ and ânowâ sure do suggest more charges to come. You have information from all the Western-nation intelligence agencies around the world on one side feeding into this, and on the other you have Gates. With this, Cohen, and other legal proceedings perking along it sure looks like the truth-revealing process continues to metastasize outside the control of the Executive Branch.
Iâm not getting my hopes up too much, I remember Fitzmas. To me that was an open and shut case, outing a CIA agent, textbook treason and all they got was a measly Scooter Libby.
Although if Mueller does come through with significant charges, I will celebrate it with my own special holiday in honor of Bobby Three Sticks, I will call it Sticksmas.
Someoneâs knockinâ at the door
Somebodyâs ringinâ the bell
Someoneâs knockinâ at the door
Somebodyâs ringinâ the bell
Do me a favor
Open the door and let 'em in, yeah, let 'em in
This whole âoutside the scope of his authorityâ thing is baffling. If, in the process of investigating a possible crime, evidence or information suggests other crimes, doesnât he have a duty to investigate?
âLook, I know thereâs a body in the trunk, but Iâm only here because the car is stolenâŚâ
One of the fine, underrated Paul McCartney songs that I still love.
If anything, tRump has already projected whatâs going on and let the cat out of the bag when he presaged his description of âspygateâ, except that the only spies tRump would have any peripheral knowledge of would be those in his own circle of deplorables he himself hired for his campaign. Manafort fits that description to a tee. The man is as close to KGB spy material as weâre going to get in this saga. Throw in assholes like Erik Prince and Roger Stone as traitors and you have a trifecta.
He does. But the issue isnât really about scope, specifically. Manafort is arguing that the crimes that he is currently under indictment, have absolutely nothing to do with anything that is in Muellerâs scope, and he is merely using them to put pressure on Manafort to cooperate.
Its not much to hang a flag on, given the broad mandate Mueller has been given, but they donât have a lot.
If we compare Muellerâs investigation to Starrâs wide ranging investigation, which was supposed to be centered on the Whitewater real estate deal and ended up about a consensual relationship with a WH internâŚthen Mueller is pretty much hitting a bullseye directing on target.
Flip, or FRY. Whatâs it gonna be, paulie walnuts?!
Vor v zakone. Klassicheski.
Flip, flop or fry
Donât care if you die
Mueller is cagey and thorough, but it would be greatness to see the subpoena hit Drumpfâs desk. What the hell is taking so long in dragging the orange fecal bolus to the table?
The target of all of this should be and must be trump. Manafort is a side item since he hasnât flipped.
- Speaking in confidence to a close compatriot in July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP admitted that there was a well-devleoped conspiracy of cooperation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidateâs campaign manager Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN both hated and feared.
- Inter alia, Source E, acknowledged that the Russian regime has been beind the recent leak of embarassing email messages, emanating from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), to the WikiLeaks platform. The reason for using WikiLeaks was âplausible deniabilityâ and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team. In return the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defence commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterize the subject.
But, of course, since Republicans say the whole investigation is based on the Totally Fake Dossier because paid for for Hillary and argle bargle and it has that awful pee story in it, no one in the mainstream or nearstream media is ever allowed to explicitly connect the dots from what is known to the allegations of the Dossier no matter how many fucking dots connect and even when their connection reveals a picture that looks like all the people actually being investigated or indicted by Mueller. And, of course, even when shit happened exactly the way the Dossier said it did and even when vital pieces of it are subsequently confirmed.
I highly recommend folks look very carefully at the whole report at pp 7-8. Russian agents inside the âDemocratic Party structure itself,â hackers in the US among the Russian emigre community cooperating with Russian hackers. Massive cash transfers through the Russian pension system run out of the Russian embassy (headed by that seemingly ubiquitous Ambassador).
Re-upping a post on the Trump Tower meeting transcripts, where Manafort figures prominently and where I think some of these hinted additional lines of inquiry may point to:
Iâve finally read through all of the Trump Tower interview transcripts from the Senate Judiciary committee and all the exhibits. It was a huge load of documents to get through. Iâll try to summarize my understanding of what that meeting was really about.
Date: 6/9/16
Location: Trump Tower, Conference Room, 23rd Floor.
Attendees: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin, Rob Goldstone, Ike Kaveladze, Anatoli Samorochorov.
Other Notable Attendee: Paul Manafortâs phone and whomever he was communicating with (via device) during the meeting.
Nutshell High Level Summary/Observations
In a nutshell, the Trump Tower meeting was a key event in Russiaâs intelligence operation to disrupt the US elections in order to favor Trump and damage Hillary Clinton. The meeting itself was layered with disconnected intermediaries and embedded plausible deniability scenarios in order to provide cover in case it became public. However, the messages of the meeting were clear: Russia desired to offer help to Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton, and Russia wanted certain things in return.
The meeting was directed at the highest levels of the Russian government and executed by Yuri Chaika (Public Prosecutor) and Aras Agalarov (head of Crocus Group and Trumpâs primary partner in the Miss Universe & part of attempts to build a Trump Tower Moscow). Chaika and Agalarov put together a team of intermediaries to organize, attend and dictate the message of the meeting. Chaikaâs main intermediary was Natalia Veselnitskaya, as who we now know is an admitted Russian agent who takes direction from Chaika. Aras Agalarovâs main intermediaries were his son (Emin), Eminâs agent (Rob Goldstone) and his US based real estate business partner, Ike Kaveladze. In addition, Veselnitskaya brought on board known ex-Soviet military (w/counterintel background) and hacker extraordinaire Rinat Akhmetshin and an interpreter, Anatoli Samorochorov.
The set up of the meeting through Emin Agalarov and Rob Goldstone was intended to alert Trump that the Russian governmentâs offer of campaign help was serious. Trump knew Agalarov very well and considered him connected to Putin and Peskov. A message from Agalarov would be taken seriously. The incriminating email from Goldstone to Junior bluntly stated the purpose:
Emin just called-and asked me to contact you with something very interesting.
The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its governmentâs support for Mr. Trump ⢠helped along by Aras and Emin.
In simple English, Russia was offering information that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton and be useful for Trump. That is, plainly, an offer to undertake an act in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act. We know from the email chain and phone log that Junior was very excited by the possibility. âIf itâs what you say, I love itâ, and those calls to blocked numbers (likely Trump Sr.) followed up by Trump Sr.âs own public statements promising big news on Hillary, all tell us that the message was received by Trump and was taken seriously.
Once Junior agreed to that meeting, it indicated an acceptance of the offer to meet to discuss a possible agreement to undertake acts which would violate the federal election campaign act and constitute a conspiracy. In addition, if the material offered or utilized by Russia at or following this meeting was stolen emails or other stolen property, then that would trigger a violation of the computer fraud and abuse act plus a conspiracy charge.
The meeting had at least 7 known confirmed participants: Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rob Goldstone, Ike Kaveladze, and Anatoli Samorochorov.
Most of the meeting itself was a discussion of the Russian cover story led by Natalia Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin. That cover story was the Russian campaign, through a front human rights organization, to overturn the Magnitsky Act and related sanctions and to get the US government to prosecute Putin nemesis Bill Browder, the main force behind exposing Russiaâs financial corruption and the establishment of the Magnitsky Act. The focus on âadoptionsâ and the Magnitsky Act clearly frustrated Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. who each complained that this was not what they were expecting. To me, those statements establish the state of mind and intent of both Trump Jr and (to a lesser extent, Kushner) that they expected to get a certain type of information to use against HRC, but were not satisfied with what they were offered. It should also be noted that the Russians did offer what they thought to be information against Hillary: information that the Ziff Brothers (billionaires and supposed partners with Bill Browder) had made a lot of contributions to the DNC & Clinton and had allegedly violated Russiaâs tax laws (translation: The Ziff Brothers didnât allow Putin to take his cut). So, the notion from the Trumpers that nothing material was offered at the meeting is wrong. There was an actual offer of incriminating info against HRC. The Trumpers didnât think it was bad enough to do damage.
The implicit response from Trump Jr was: âwe want the dirt, but you have to give us the right kind of dirt.â Think of it like a drug deal set up from Breaking Bad where a gang is promised Walter Whiteâs blue crystal meth but Walter shows up with standard issue crystal meth instead. That meeting would still represent an illicit attempted conspiracy imho.
However, there was a second parallel meeting that occurred over the same time span as the one being led by Junior. It was the meeting between Paul Manafort and whomever he was communicating with via his phone. Every participant states that Manafort was looking at his phone for the entirety of the meeting. One participant (Samorochorov, the interpreter, and the only person from this crew whom I would qualify as reasonably honest) stated that Manafort chimed in when Veselnitskaya mentioned the Ziff Brothers issue and suggested that while interesting it would be tough to tie that to HRC). Other than that, he never looked up from his phone for the duration of the meeting.
Manafort, however, was paying attention to something as we have his notes, much of which does not match up to what everyone else has testified re: the meeting discussion.
⢠Bill Browder
⢠Offshore - Cyprus
⢠133m shares
⢠Companies
⢠Not invest â loan
⢠Value in Cyprus as inter
⢠Illici
⢠Active sponsors of RNC
⢠Browder hired Joanna Glover
⢠Tied into Cheney
⢠Russian adoption by American families
Of this list of 11 items, only 2 can be said to be clearly reflected in the discussions based on the interviews of 6 of the 7 participants. If Manafort made these notes during that meeting, where did he get this list of items from? When did he get that list? If one assumes the notes were written during that meeting or that day, then either Manafort held a parallel communication with someone through text/IM while that meeting was taking place, or he had a separate conversation immediately before or after said meeting with someone representing the Russian side.
My working theory is that Aras Agalarov and one other person (perhaps his son who speaks English fluently, or someone else known to Manafort and/or Aras Agalarov ) was on the other end of that text/IM conversation. The reason I say Agalarov was involved is because he immediately called Ike Kaveladze after the meeting to get a report on how it went. He then followed up within a few days by sending Trump a present. It meant something to him to make sure this meeting went off as planned. Thatâs odd for someone as wealthy as Agalarov to focus on something so mundane with no business interest in mind. This wasnât a meeting about a $1 billion construction project. It was a meeting where a Russian lawyer handed over talking points about the Magnitsky Act. I think Agalarov was doing it on the instructions of Putin as communicated by Dmitry Peskov, Putinâs press spokesman. We know from the David Corn/Michael Isikoff book and the testimony of the Russians who attended the meeting that Agalarov and Peskov had spoken a few times during the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, so he would be a likely choice to communicate a message from Vladimir Putin.
The Russian message to the Trump team seemed to be the following:
⢠Use various connections to get an investigation opened into Bill Browder as part of a strategy to repeal the Magnitsky Act
⢠Make repeal of the Magnitsky Act a key priority, using the âadoptionsâ cover story as a way to lobby US lawmakers
⢠Some reference to a financing mechanism to support the campaign/conspiracy effort
Tthere are the 6 items that relate to obscure topics not mentioned in the meeting.
⢠Offshore - Cyprus
⢠133m shares
⢠Companies
⢠Not invest â loan
⢠Value in Cyprus as inter
⢠Illici
⢠Active sponsors of RNC
We do know that Manafort is quite familiar with Cyprus, due to his various money laundering history and charges. The remainder of the list seems to suggest some movement of money in the form of a loan for a financing purpose. Iâve long believed that Manafort/Gates were quite likely instrumental in turning on the spigot of Russian and foreign money that began to flow into the Trump/GOP networks through Russian controlled US entities. Could this be a first sign of that agreement? I do not know, but itâs worth noting that these do seem to suggest a financing component to the meeting that was not discussed by the other parties who attended the meeting.
In addition, there are the references to Dick Cheney, Joanna Glover and active sponsors of the RNC. I believe 2 of the 3 relate to Bill Browder, as Glover once worked for Browder. The âactive sponsors of the RNCâ could be a reference to either Browder or this inscrutable, yet discernible, financial element. One theory I have is that the meeting itself was a front while Aras Agalarov and other hand picked intermediaries by Dmitry Peskov (Putinâs press secretary) delivered the real message directly to Manafort.
Of the other meeting participants themselves, Junior has committed the most false statements, with his outright denial that he spoke to his father, his unexplained phone log, and his categorial statement that he did not have any other meetings with foreigners who offered help to the campaign.
The other Russians (Akhmetshin and Kaveladze) are very well schooled in Russian propaganda. They are slippery and difficult to nail down. They often repeat Pro-Putin talking points but are effective salesmen because of their contacts with US culture (Akhmetshin and Kaveladze in particular). But those 2 guys are essentially liars. Theyâre not loyal to the US. Theyâre loyal to Russia; they make their money working for Russian enterprises and they and jump at any call to join up and help Team Putin. Veselnitskaya is fairly transparent as a true believing operative to help the Russian state. I do not think she knew what Agalarov had communicated to Manafort, but Iâm fairly certain she understood she was playing a role in a 5 part Russian intelligence operation. The Russians appear to like to keep things siloed for plausible deniability. The interpreter, Samorochorov, seems like the only honest person in the group.
As for Rob Goldstone, this guy seemed to immediately understand that he was being used and that the information or message being communicated through him was explosive with potential legal consequences, but he played his role anyway. Goldstone has struggled with his role as is apparent from his 2 transcripts, but thereâs little question in my mind that he did it because Emin Agalarov forced him to, and Emin was his only client at the time. That makes Emin Agalarov a potential principal and Goldstone a potential accomplice. Emin Agalarov was taking orders from his dad, Aras, but I get no sense that Emin had any objection to this role. He liked Trump, and his dadâs connections to the Russian government were vitally important for the family business and his own career.
Thereâs tons more that can be written about this meeting if one does a detailed review of all the transcripts. I would love to have the time to do that. In my view, based on the read of the transcripts and exhibits, I would hope Mueller could build a case for a conspiracy charge to violate the federal election campaign act that would implicate Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, Donald Trump Jr., Rob Goldstone, and Paul Manafort. I am not certain of Jared Kushnerâs actual culpability beyond attending the meeting. With the others, I think one can tie each of the other participants (except the interpreter) to this particular conspiracy track. There may also be FARA issues as this meeting couldâve been viewed as a first stage of a lobbying effort because they had a proposed follow-up with Trump after the election to promote the same Magnitsky Act/sanctions repeal. All that said, I think thereâs enough just looking at this meeting in isolation to investigate and charge people. But this meeting, once fit into a timeline of contacts from various sources, looks even more damning in that context.
Thanks for the link. After reading the dossier I am almost convinced the Russians changed the voting machines and the Bot Army-DNC hacks-Cambridge Analytica-Facebook-Wikileaks collusion was about creating âplausible deniabilityâ for hacking the voting machines. It seems like the amount of money invested by Putin alone means the Russians would want more than just influence the campaign. And, as we move into the summer before midterms it seems the neo-nazis/Trump crazies are in the news more and more, again I canât help but notice that these people arenât seen in our culture nor in their own family-friend systems as people to be taken seriously. You know? Whether its an Alt-right podcaster, a neo nazi club in Florida, a pundit on CNN, a very angry octogenarian, they all seem like their views arenât respected among their own FB friends never mind the general US population. But, theyâand the Bots that âlikeâ them sure do create the illusion that there are a lot of people like themâbut millions? no way.
Depends on the scope of the warrant or activity. For a search warrant, you canât look someplace where the item cannot logically be found, ie canât look in a nightstand drawer if you are searching for a piano.
Also, if the damning evidence is found in a search without the ownerâs permission and without a warrant, it can be deemed inadmissible (ie in a traffic stop). Although, the right wing SCOTUS is trying to erase that fourth amendment protection.
BUT, in either of those cases, you can start a new investigation, just that you have to show probable cause without the âbadâ evidence.
In this instance, it would appear thereâs more than enough probably cause to continue an investigation. Although for the special counselâs office, they do need to inform the AG (or in this case the deputy AG) of the direction they are going. The AG could theoretically say no, thatâs out of your jurisdiction, but that would cause more problems than it would solve.
Yet he has guilty pleas from Flynn, Papadopolous, Gates already, no?
Thanks. Saw the comment the first time around but forgot to ask if you thought Donald, Junior was aware that what the Russians were offering was illegal. (Or if I did ask, Iâve forgotten your response.)
Yeah, I think he knew it was illegal. He didnât care. Goldstone thought it was legally problematic. He did it anyway. Some people just think the laws donât matter to them. Ignorance of the law is not a defense to a crime. The issue is whether he intended to seek campaign help from a foreign govât. I think the email chain, the acceptance of the meeting and his comments during the meeting establish that. That he also sought other similar meetings with other foreign government reps buttresses that point of view. That he lied about it under oath also confirms that he knew what he was doing was legally questionable and sought to cover it up. But the key is that he openly solicited foreign support for his dadâs campaign.